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SY THE SAME AUTHOR 

TOM STRONG 

WASHINGTON’S SCOUT 

Illustrated. 2nd printing 

$1 .23 net, by mail $1 .35 

“ ' The Courant ’ has recently received 
a copy of a ‘boys’ book’ which strikes 
us as meeting all the wants in the case. 
Kind friends can safely give it in the 
knowledge that it is really a good and 
informing work, and the boys needn’t 
cast it aside because it is good for ’em. 
If they start, they will read it clear 
through. It is the story of a youth in 
the Revolution. It is very cleverly 
written. The reader never loses inter- 
est in the adventurous boy, but, as he 
reads, the chief events of the Revolu- 
tion pass in review .” — The Hartford 
Louraut. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
Publishers New York 








.:^ - .. ^. '-• t ■ ••..■a&js,. '., .r.s 





Washington’s Headquarters, Hasbrouck House, Newburg, New York 




TOM STRONG, 
BOY - CAPTAIN 


A STORY OF AMERICA 


By 

ALFRED BISHOP MASON 

;i 

Author of “Tom Strong, Washington’s Scout” 


ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1913 


. V\ 3ns 


T^- 


Copyright, 1913, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 


Published August, 1913 




This Tale of a Stout-hearted Boy 
Is Dedicated to a Dear Little Girl 
Harriet 



FOREWORD 


Many of the. persons and personages who appear 
upon the pages of this book have already lived, 
some in history and some in the pages of “ Tom 
Strong, Washington’s Scout.” Those who wish to 
know the boy’s story from its beginning should read 
that book too. 





ILLUSTRATIONS 


Washington’s Headquarters, Hasbrouck House, 

Newburg, New York Frontispiece 

PAGE 

Daniel Boone 24 

Van Cortlandt House, Built in 1748 .... 77 

James Watt 83 

Fraunces’ Tavern 91 

From an etching by Wm. Sartain 

Washington Resigning at Annapolis .... 94 

From the painting by E. H. Blashfield 

Mount Vernon . 117 

Washington’s Tomb 119 

Robert Morris 153 

Rufus King 168 

John Jacob Astor 186 

After a painting by G. C. Stuart 

Gunston Hall * 204 

Early Ohio River Flatboat 212 

General James Wilkinson ...... 225 

From a portrait in the State House, Philadelphia, Pa. 

Hernando de Soto 238 

Independence Hall in 1776 ...... 291 

The Washington Arch, New York .... 292 

Statue of Washington, New York Sub-Treasury . 312 

The Walter Franklin House, Washington’s Resi- 
dence IN New York 315 

Washington Taking the Oath 316 

MAPS 

Eastern Half of the United States .... 2 

Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island . .179 



TOM STRONG, BOY- CAPTAIN 



TOM STRONG, BOY-CAPTAIN 


CHAPTER I 

«gTOP!’’ 

The old trapper had said it under his breath, 
but the word rang like a trumpet in Tom Strong’s 
ear. When men are walking side by side with 
Death, every sense is strained, every nerve is tense. 

Tom stopped and stood still, peering around a 
tree-trunk into the tangled forest, so bright with 
the colors of autumn that a painted savage might 
well escape detection amid the blaze of red and 
yellow leaves. 

Zed Pratt slipped to Tom’s side with a step as 
noiseless as a feather floating in the air. His voice 
sank yet lower. 

“ It’s too still. The birds have stopped singing. 
See that squirrel hide a hundred yards ahead. 
There are men near us, Tom. And men means In- 
juns in Kentucky.” 


3 


4 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Tom tried to see the squirrel, but in vain. It 
took Zed’s trained eye — trained by years of danger 
in the Indian-haunted forests where he had trapped 
the otter and the beaver — to distinguish the little 
animal that had suddenly flattened itself on the 
topmost bough of a giant tree further down the 
trail. It had seen the boy and the trapper, per- 
haps; but it had seen other men. It knew that 
when there was a certain motion below, the motion 
of men, men who carried guns, guns that shot with 
deadly precision, it was time for squirrels to hide 
and keep still. 

The man and the boy looked and listened. For a 
while they saw nothing and heard nothing. Then 
the trapper both saw and heard. His grasp tight- 
ened on Tom’s elbow. He pushed him gently into 
the hollow trunk of the tall sycamore behind which 
they had been standing. He followed him into the 
shelter. 

In a moment an Indian, almost naked, in full war- 
paint, slipped noiselessly by, coming from the west. 
Tom and the trapper had come from the east. Then 
came another, and another, and another. A few 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 5 

seconds later, from a little glade near by, where a 
tiny sparkle of water danced across the trail, there 
came a guttural sound. 

‘‘Ugh! Foot!” 

The foremost savage had stopped and was bend- 
ing over the little brook. His comrades crowded 
about him. There was the mark of a foot there. 
Zed had taught Tom much woodcraft during the 
five years since the boy tumbled into the trapper’s 
arms in the boat at the foot of Wall Street, bound 
for the battle of Long Island, but the pupil was 
not yet perfect. While Zed always walked the 
wilderness without leaving a trace, Tom did so only 
sometimes. At the brooklet, his foot had slipped 
from a stone and had left on the gravel-shore a 
faint print of moccasined toes. The fierce eye of 
the Delaware read it as if it were the print in a 
book. 

“Is it fresh?” 

The speaker was a tall man, dressed (or un- 
dressed) as an Indian, painted as an Indian, but 
the lines of his face and the tone of his voice be- 
trayed him. He was Simon Girty, a renegade white, 


6 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

fiercer, more bloodthirsty, more cruel than the de- 
mons who obeyed him throughout the smiling 
plains and tree-clad hills of what is now Ohio, and 
throughout the lovely glades and splendid forests of 
what was even then often called Kentucky and, per- 
haps, more often “ the Dark and Bloody Ground.” 
Simon Girty was one of four brothers, captured by 
Indians with their mother and stepfather years 
before in a foray on the Pennsylvania frontier. 
They had been taken across the Ohio. In an Indian 
village on the Miami, they had seen their stepfather 
bound to the stake and tortured to death. The 
mother’s fate is a mystery, but the four sons grew 
up to manhood among their captors and were 
adopted into the tribe. All of them were dreaded 
in every little hamlet, in every solitary hut, where 
the white pioneers of civilization made their clear- 
ings and plowed their fields or pitched their bark 
wigwams and trapped for furs at a daily risk of life, 
but with a daily draught of that splendid freedom 
that only the wilderness has to give. Of the four, 
Simon was the worst. Mothers scared their chil- 
dren into stillness with his name. Men shuddered as 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 7 

they told the tale of his devilish doings. He once 
spared an old friend; he once ransomed a captive 
woman. The rest of his record was as black and as 
red as the paint that covered his face on the war- 
path. He was the leader of the wolf-packs that 
harried the western frontier in this Year of Our 
Lord, 1781. Again he asked: 

“Is it fresh?” 

The savage who had kneeled over the footprint 
rose to his feet with a hyena smile. 

“ Few minutes. Not more. White man.” 

“ Only one?” 

There was another close study of earth and 
water, leaf and fallen twig. Despite their deadly 
danger. Zed grinned and nudged Tom, as they 
crouched together in the tree-trunk, when the In- 
dian answered: 

“ One. No more. My scalp. You go on. I 
find, kill, catch up.” 

“ We will all find and kill.” 

“ The Bear-Who-Walks needs no help.” 

The eyes of the savage flashed angrily, but Girty’s 


8 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

look dominated him. His fierce glance fell, yet he 

muttered : 

The scalp belongs to me.” 

Tom felt his scalp crawl over his ears. 

“ You shall have it,” said Girty. 

The three Indians and the renegade spread into a 
half-circle and began casting about for signs of their 
prey, like hounds on the trail of a fox. Zed looked 
at the priming of Tom’s gun and of his own. 
Those were the days of flintlocks. There was a 
firm hand-clasp between man and boy. Then they 
waited. 

We left Tom and Zed, on the closing page of 

Tom Strong, Washington’s Scout,” captains of 
the Continental Army, serving for the day on Wash- 
ington’s staff, on that day of days, October 19, 1781, 
when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. Then 
they were hunters of men in the midst of an army. 
Now, alone in this farflung forest, they were hunted 
of men. This was the way of it. 

A few days after the capture of Cornwallis, the 
boy and the man, captains both, both made sO' for 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 9 

gallantry on the field of battle, were sitting together 
on a Virginia rail fence, in front of the log-house 
where they were quartered in Yorktown. 

“ Tom,” said the trapper, “ the war’s over. Our 
country’s ours, not the King’s any longer. What 
are ye goin’ to do ? ” 

“ Do ? I’m going to stay in the army until we 
know the war’s over. Then I’m going to New 
York — and to Mother ” 

“ God bless h^r,” interjected the trapper. She’s 
the motherest mother I ever knew.” 

“ And work and make her as happy as I can. 
You must come with me. Zed. Mother and I want 
you to stay with us forever.” 

'' No town for me,” said the trapper, sturdily. 
“ I’ll come and visit ye and tell your mother what 
a fine lad ye are — she’s never tired of hearing that — 
whenever I have the chance, but I must see the Big 
Woods again, and trap the beaver again, and bet my 
life against Indian tricks again. I want to breathe 
free once more. There ain’t room to breathe this 
side the Alleghanies. Come with me. Try it for a 
year and I’ll go home with ye then. I can’t now. 


lo Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

I just can’t. I just must have the great open 
spaces and the Big Woods. Come with me, my 
boy.” 

“ But we can’t leave the army. The King may 
send more troops here and the army must be ready 
for them.” 

There’ll be no more. Colonel Hamilton says 
so. He ought to know. He knows everything. 
And he says he can get us furloughs, so we can go 
now and come back if needs be.” 

I’d like a furlough if there’s to be no more 
fighting, but I’d go home to Mother.” 

It’s little ye’ll see of your mother for a year or 
so. The Britishers will hold New York till peace is 
signed. She can’t get out of town, and if ye go 
there, the only choice they’ll give ye is to be shot or 
to be hung, perhaps not that. They’ll just hang 
ye offhand.” 

Colonel Alexander Hamilton got them their fur- 
loughs, on condition that they would go to Ken- 
tucky. What is now the splendid State of that 
name was then a province of Virginia. General 
Washington was glad to guide their minds and turn 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain ii 

their steps to the western outpost of the Old Do- 
minion he loved so well. 

While the Americans were battling against Brit- 
ish armies and their hired Hessians in the East, they 
had to battle in the West against British officials 
and their hired Indians. Early in the war Colonel 
George Rogers Clark had led a Virginian force far 
to the West and captured the English outposts at 
Vincennes, Indiana, and at Cahokia and Kaskaskia, 
two sleepy old Erench settlements in Illinois, on the 
eastern bank of the Mississippi, near St. Louis. The 
little garrison he left could not, however, overawe 
the many Indian villages between the Alleghanies 
and the Father-of-Waters, as the Indians had bap- 
tized the majestic Mississippi. These Indians were 
constantly spurred on to murder and rapine by the 
commandants of the English posts along the Great 
Lakes, Ogdensburg, Oswego, and Niagara in New 
York, Detroit and Mackinaw in Michigan. These 
five posts were held by England until after Wash- 
ington’s second presidential term began, in 1793. 
Detroit was the especial center of activity, where 
savage forays were planned, guns and ammunition 


12 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

supplied, scalps and spoils bought. In the South- 
west, too, English officers stirred up Indian raids. 
From the Southwest, Captain Alexander Cameron 
officially reported, July 15, 1779: “They [the In- 
dians] keep continually scalping and killing in Vir- 
ginia, North Carolina, and the frontier of Georgia.” 
An official report from Detroit, October 23, 1781, 
to Lord George Germaine at London says : “ Many 
smaller Indian parties have been very successful. 

. . . Parties are continually employed upon the 
back settlements. From the Illinois country to the 
frontiers of New York there is a continual succes- 
sion. . . . The perpetual terror and losses of the 
inhabitants will, I hope, operate powerfully in our 
favour.” Washington planned wisely when he sent 
the trapper and Tom to join the thin line of the de- 
fenders of our Western frontier. 

They had climbed the Alleghanies, and had seen 
from their summits the Promised Land, and had 
passed through the little settlements that fringed the 
mountains and became fewer and smaller as one 
tramped toward the setting sun. They were press- 
ing forward to Boone’s Station, where Daniel 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 13 

Boone stood sentinel on the farthest frontier. They 
were but a few miles from it when they had sought 
refuge in the hollow tree, near which Simon Girty, 
Bear- Who- Walks, and the two other braves were 
now searching for them. 

Was the old trapper trapped at last? 

If he had been alone, he would have wriggled 
silently away through the underbrush which sur- 
rounded them, and which hid the cavity in the 
tree, but there was no chance of Tom’s being able to 
do that. They must await their foes where they 
were. In a thistledown of a whisper, a mere shadow 
of speech, he gave Tom his instructions. 

“ Shoot as soon as ye’re sure to kill, not a tenth 
of a second before. As soon as ye’ve shot, fling 
yourself on your face and reload. Their bullets’ll 
go over ye. Have your knife handy.” 

The silence was terrible. There was not a sound 
from the four demons so near. Tom fancied they 
were holding their very breath. 

Then came a roar, a crash, a blow that shook the 
earth. A great tree near by, eaten away by the 
slow decay of centuries, fell headlong. Two braves 


14 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

leapt into sight, leaping to avoid death by the tree- 
fall only to meet death by the flight of bullets. 
Zed and Tom fired together, flung themselves on 
their faces, and reloaded with -feverish energy. The 
two Indians went to the Happy Hunting Grounds. 
One bullet whizzed through the tree, three feet 
above the ground. Then silence again, the ter- 
rible silence. Then a whisper. 

“ Stay here.” 

Tom nodded as Zed crawled, snakelike, out into the 
brush. A moment later, there was a shout, a furious 
struggle, a frantic yell from Zed : “ Tom ! Come ! ” 

The boy leapt forward with great bounds, to 
find Zed and a painted savage locked in an iron 
grip, their guns on the ground beside them. The 
Indian’s right hand, gripping a hunting-knife, was 
slowly escaping from Zed’s grasp. A second more 
and the blade would have pierced the trapper’s heart. 
But there was a second to spare. Tom’s bullet flew 
towards its mark. It struck a finger of the upraised 
hand. The knife dropped. The man twisted him- 
self out of Zed's hold and dived into the brush. 
He could be heard crashing through the forest like 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 15 

a maddened deer. Then there was silence again. 

Zed sank to the ground, gasping. 

‘‘Are you hurt, Zed? Are you hurt?” Tom 
cried, with a sob in his voice. 

“ Nary a mite, son,” the trapper grinned. “ He 
squeezed the breath out o’ me, that’s all. He’s got 
away, but we’re a gun and a knife to the good, any- 
way. Hush, Tom. What am I thinking of? 
Where’s the fourth Indian? Two of ’em won’t 
ever hurt anybody any more; the one that jumped 
on me hasn’t a weapon left; but where’s the other? ” 

A long, gasping sigh answered the question. Zed 
sprang to his feet, clutched his gun, and, stooping, 
ran towards the sound. Tom was close behind him. 
Under one of the big boughs of the fallen tree lay 
Bear-Who-Walks. He had been knocked senseless 
and now lay helpless. His tomahawk was in his 
belt, his gun was beside him, but both arms were 
pinioned to the ground. Consciousness had returned 
with the long sigh. He glared at his approaching 
enemies with stoic calm, with haughty defiance. 

Zed drew his knife as he approached the helpless 
warrior. His eyes gleamed with as savage hate as 


i6 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

that which flashed from Bear-Who-Walks. Tom 
stepped between the two and laid his hand upon the 
trapper’s arm. 

“Don’t, Zed; please, don’t. I couldn’t stand 
having you kill him.” 

The old trapper stared at him with utter amaze- 
ment. 

“Couldn’t stand — my — killing him? Why, boy, 
you just killed one of the varmints yourself.” 

“ In the hot blood of a fight, to save our lives, yes. 
But not this way, in cold blood. ’Twould be 
murder.” 

“ Get out of my way, boy. The only good Injun 
is a dead Injun. Quit your foolin’. I’m goin’ to 
kill him as I would a snake. He’s worse’n the pizen- 
est rattler that ever struck.” 

“ Zed, I just had the good luck to save your life. 
Give me a life for a life. Let this fellow go. 
Please, Zed.” 

It was hard work, but Tom carried his point. 
The grumbling trapper gave way to what he thought 
was the wildest folly. 

“ Have it your own way, son. Have it your own 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 17 

blame fool way. Turn the murderer loose to mur- 
der some more. Shall we give him our guns and 
knives as well as his own ? ” 

The boy laughed. “ Well, hardly that. His are 
fair spoils of war.” 

They took his weapons, then lifted the bough that 
held him down. Bruised and bleeding, he rose to 
his feet and faced them steadily. 

Bear- Who- Walks will sing the death-song of 
the Delaware. No Long Knife can make him a 
squaw in his heart.” 

“ Oh, hush, you red devil. Go ! ” 

Zed pointed to the forest about them. The Dela- 
ware stood still, bewildered, unbelieving. He 
thought his foes could not be such fools. 

“ Go, I tell you. I wanted kill you. Boy says 
‘ Go.’ Not I. But go.” 

The Indian turned tO' Tom. 

“ Go — and go quick,” said Tom. And he, too, 
.pointed to the forest. 

Bear-Who-Walks pressed the fingers of his right 
hand into the blood upon his side and smeared 
Tom’s forehead red. 


1 8 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

“ In my wigwam there will be venison and maize 
for my blood-brother. The young Long Knife need 
never fear the tomahawks of the Delawares. I, 
Bear-Who-Walks, say it.” 

With the stately tread of a chief, he walked into 
the forest and was swallowed up in it. 

“ Why did he call me ‘ Young Long Knife ’ ? ” 

‘‘ ’Tis their name for the whites, my boy. Well, 
well, perhaps the red devil may do ye a good turn 
some day. Tve heard of such things. But I mis- 
doubt it. ’Twould have been safer to kill him. At 
any rate, we’ve two scalps to show old Daniel 
Boone.” 

As he spoke, he tucked the hideous trophies into 
his belt. Then the man and boy, laden with their 
enemies’ weapons as well as their own, turned to the 
trail, and plodded silently along. The scalps swing- 
ing as Zed moved made Tom rather ill, but he knew 
the old trapper was sore over the release of Bear- 
Who-Walks and he knew, too, that scalping was the 
bloody rule of the Dark and Bloody Ground, for 
white man and red man alike. So he said nothing. 

Little red drops fell on the ground as Zed walked. 


CHAPTER II 


^ Jj^ ^HE trail led them to a clearing. At its edge 
they halted and waved a handkerchief in sign 
of peace until the same signal was given from the 
log-stockade that stood in the center of the open 
space. The clearing stretched a little more than a 
rifle-shot on every side of the palisade. This was 
to prevent a besieging force hiding under cover and 
still attacking. Tom and the trapper stepped into 
the open and walked forward to the door of the 
little fort. A gun-barrel gleamed in the afternoon 
sun at a porthole on each side of the gateway. 
They were within twenty feet of it before the guns 
were withdrawn and the gate opened. In Kentucky 
in 1781 eternal vigilance was the price not only of 
liberty, but of life. Even then, a half-dozen armed 
men barred their way for a moment. 

Who be ye ? ” said their spokesman. 

Captain Zed Pratt,” answered the trapper, “ and 
this is Captain Tom Strong, both of the Continental 
Army.” 


19 


20 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

“ Downv East you must make captains out of 
rather young saplings,” laughed the frontiersman. 
“ A man has to be grown up hereabouts to lead 
other men. Come in, Old-Man-Cap, and you, Boy- 
Cap, too.” He smiled at the embarrassed boy and 
held out the ready hand of Kentucky hospitality. 
“ I’m Simon Kenton,” he added. ‘‘ Most Ken- 
tuckians knows who Simon Kenton is. And so 
does lots of Indians.” 

Despite the braggadocio of the man, he had a 
winning way with him. And his boast was a true 
one. Next to Daniel Boone ranks Simon Kenton 
in the annals of the Kentucky frontier. He was 
born in Fauquier County, Virginia, in 1755. When 
he was nineteen, he could neither read nor write.. 
Leadership was born in him. He had a row over 
some rustic belle; knocked his rival down; thought 
he had killed him; fled across the mountains to 
“ the Dark and Bloody Ground.” Since then, his 
life had been one long Indian fight. He had been 
captured many times. He had run the gauntlet 
thirteen times. Running the gauntlet between two 
long lines of Indians whose idea of joy was to see 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 21 

how near they could come to killing a captive with- 
out quite doing so was a ghastly torture. Once he 
had been tied to the stake and a fire kindled at his 
feet. There was no risk he had not run, none he was 
not ready to run. Unlike Daniel Boone, who was 
by nature a lover of peace, Simon Kenton loved 
fighting. He liked hunting big game. The biggest 
game of all was a live Indian. 

The attitude of the American to the Indian has 
always been barbarian. Washington commented, 
in a letter, upon the fact that the frontiersman 
killed Indians when he could and did not seem to 
regard them as human. William Campbell, a man 
of sterling and gentle character, inserts in a love- 
letter to his wife, “ his dearest Betsey,” the sister of 
Patrick Henry : ‘‘ I have now the scalp of an In- 
dian. . . . The first time I go up, I shall take it 
along to let you see it.” 

Not a great many years ago, a dozen men camped 
for some weeks in Wyoming. The party had a 
guide, a man who spent his winters with his old 
parents in Pennsylvania, the rest of his time on the 
plains. He seemed a gentle person. The Indians 


22 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

were at peace just then. Soon after the campers 
reached Salt Lake City, one of them had a letter 
from this guide. He wrote, in substance : “ I am 
sending you a good headdress. I got it from an 
Indian. I saw him before he saw me and got a 
good shot at him.’’ 

When our heroes were safe inside Boone’s Sta- 
tion, they saw it was 250 by 125 feet, with walls 
of alternate log-cabin and stockade; with corner 
blockhouses projecting beyond the walls, so as to 
protect them by a flanking fire; with two massive 
framed gates. There was not a pound of iron used 
in the making of the fort. Windows there were 
none, but portholes were a-plenty. The cabin doors 
were thick and solid, with massive bars. Each hut 
was a little fort in itself, so that if the stockade 
which surrounded them were carried each could be 
defended to the last. A cold spring bubbled up in 
the center. Buffalo meat and venison were drying 
in the open, hung from long poles supported in the 
crotches of uprights. Two or three robust women 
were on an open porch. In a corner half a dozen 
children, who had gathered in a shy group to see 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 23 

the strangers, went back to their play. They were 
playing Indian. One of them was bound to a stake 
and the others were piling firewood about him. It 
was grim sport, fit for the children of the back- 
woods. 

There was eager questioning. Tom and Zed told 
the details of Cornwallis’s surrender, rumors of 
which had filtered through the countryside before 
their arrival. They told of their tramp over the 
Blue Ridge. They told of the journey from hamlet 
to hamlet on the Dark and Bloody Ground. Finally 
they told of their escape that day. 

“ I seen them two scalps wuz fresh,” said Jim 
Kerr, a long, slabsided, tobacco-chewing frontiers- 
man. “ I sort o’ wondered where you got ’em. 
Me and Bear-Who-Walks has shot at each other 
more’n once. When you’ve bin hereabouts a while 
longer, Boy-Cap, you won’t let any redskin git away 
like you did the Bear. Will he, boys? ” 

There was a full-throated savage growl of as- 
sent from all the men. 

‘‘ So there’s two of the devils loose near here, 
Bear-Who-Walks and t’other one that ran. He 


24 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

must be the white man you heerd talkin’. Gosh, do 
you s’pose he was Girty? ” 

There was a moment’s silence. The men looked 
almost scared. Then they sprang to their feet, 
seized their guns, and ran to the gateway. A shot 
had been fired at the edge of the clearing. A man 
was running at full speed to the stockade. It was 
Daniel Boone. 

Boone was a mild-mannered man, five feet, ten 
inches high, with a gentle smile, but with hazel 
eyes that could flash fire. He was born in Bucks 
County, Pennsylvania, in 1735. He married, 
farmed, and half-starved on the Yadkin River in 
North Carolina. In 1769, he came to Kentucky. 
He was for long a captive among the Ohio In- 
dians. He was once adopted, in fact, by Blackfish, 
a Shawnee chief. An Indian adoption was a rather 
painful ceremony. Every hair on Boone’s head 
except enough of them to make a scalp-lock was 
plucked out with tweezers. Then he was stripped, 
thrown into a creek, and scrubbed for hours “ to 
take the white blood out.” It was only after this 
that the new tribesman was painted and the feasting 



» 


Daniel Boone 


26 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

so, but we all wuz so interested in what Old-Man- 
Cap and Boy-Cap here wuz tellin’ us we sort o’ 
forgot.” 

“Ye sort o’ forgot the wimmen and children 
too, didn’t ye? If the Indians hed come when you 
all wuz flappin’ your ears aroun’, they wouldn’t 
’a’ forgot to kill them after they’d settled you. 
Don’t forgit ag’in, that’s all. Who all are our new 
friends?” 

So Tom and the trapper told their tale again. 
Daniel Boone fingered the two scalps with evident 
pleasure, but his face fell as he looked at them. 

“ I’d hoped,” he said, “ I’d hoped ye might ’a’ got 
the white man. If ye had, I could ’a’ forgiven ye, 
Boy-Cap, for being such a durn fool as to let Bear- 
Who-Walks git away. That white man was — 
Simon Girty ! ” 

No orator ever made a stronger climax. Boone’s 
words thrilled his audience. They rose like one 
man and clamored for him to lead them in chase 
of the dreaded fugitive. 

“ It ain’t no use,” replied Boone. “ Girty’s got 
four hours’ start of us. Night’s a-comin’. We’ve 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 27 

lost our chance this time. .But when we do cotch 
him ” 

They vied with each other in describing how the 
tortures Girty had given others would be meted out 
to him, when once he fell into their hands. It was 
a scene of savagery, made worse by the women’s 
joining eagerly in the talk and supplying one grue- 
some suggestion after another as to methods of 
torture. The red man learned from the white the 
love of liquor, and the white man learned from the 
red the love of cruelty. Both sets of pupils were 
apt. 

Here in Boone’s Station our heroes spent that 
winter, with an occasional week in the open by them- 
selves. There were no forays in winter, for the 
snow made tracking a raiding party too easy. Tom 
learned to trap, to hunt, to cook, to make a bark- 
shanty. He became wise in the lore of the woods. 
He taught the children of the little fort to read 
and write. In the children’s class for a while was 
Daniel Boone, but when the old pioneer had learned 
to scrawl something he was pleased to regard as his 
signature, his interest in “ book-l’arnin’ ” slackened. 


28 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

He told Tom he would rather read the leaves of 
trees than the leaves of books. 

“ The sky talks to me and the winds and the trees. 
I don’t care much for the chatter o’ men, whether it 
be spoken or writ. When a real man’s alone in the 
forest, he ain’t never lonely. Somethin’s sayin’ 
somethin’ to him every minnit.” 

It was a mild winter. The snow vanished early 
in February. With it vanished the peace of the 
frontier. The Ohio tribes were on the warpath 
before March began. The frontier stirred in its 
wrath and planned revenge. Word trickled through 
the hills and valleys that the white man was going to 
strike home at the Indians’ homes. Volunteers were 
to gather at Mingo Bottom on the Ohio in May. 
They came by twos and threes. One of the twos 
was Zed and Tom. The trapper was in high good 
humor over the watchword of the campaign-to-be : 
“ No prisoners.” Tom himself, after six months 
of frontier life, after hearing hundreds of tales of 
incredible barbarity, was less inclined to plume him- 
self upon having freed Bear-Who-Walks. What 
had that particular savage done since ? What was he 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 29 

doing now ? What would he do ? How far was 
Tom responsible for what Bear-Who-Walks had 
done, was doing, would do? 

When they reached Mingo Bottom, they found 
about five hundred men in a state of excitement, not 
over the proposed campaign, but over the question 
of who was to command them on the campaign. 
Both Pennsylvania and Virginia had sent militia 
there, but there was no apparent difference between 
the militia and a mob. There was no discipline. 
Neither State had ventured to commission a com- 
mander. The free men of the frontier would serve 
under only those chiefs they had themselves chosen. 
There were two candidates. Colonel William Craw- 
ford, veteran, gentleman, old friend of Washington, 
and David Williamson, a man of rude force, who 
had just distingushed himself by an atrocious act. 
He had thrown ninety-six Christian Indians, men, 
women and children, converts of a Moravian Mis- 
sion, into an extemporized jail, and had then or- 
dered them butchered in cold blood. The horrid 
deed was done. It had revolted even the frontiers- 
men, or at least some of them. It cost Williamson 


30 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

the election, but Crawford beat him by only five 
votes out of the five hundred. 

On a beautiful May morning the little army 
moved northwestward with some slight semblance 
of discipline and order. Scouts preceded the main 
body about half a mile. Zed and Tom were among 
them. Then came a straggling line of men, so 
many of them in fringed buckskin trousers and 
coats that they seemed in uniform. Then Colonel 
Crawford, with one staff officer. Zed and Tom 
were to complete his staff when the scouts should 
fall back on the main force. Then another strag- 
gling line. A few pack-animals brought up the 
rear. The nine-days’ march had begun. 

As they neared the Sandusky plains Indian signs 
began. Crawford had hoped to surprise his wily 
foes, but his undisciplined troops could not be kept 
still. They shouted and they sang. Some of them 
discharged their guns from time to time, in sheer 
bravado. On June fourth, when they struck the 
first Wyandot village, it was deserted. They were 
now on a vast prairie, studded with swamps and 
with small groves. They pushed forward. Zed 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 31 

and Tom, a mile in advance, saw a flock of wild 
geese rise from a distant swamp. A moment later, 
sandhill cranes flew from a nearby barren. Then 
prairie-chickens, darting through the tall grass, ran 
almost into the muzzles of their guns. 

“ The game is scared by our game,” said Zed. 

Get back and tell Crawford there’s Injuns here. 
I’ll stay and mark ’em. They’ll be in the trees 
somewheres.” 

Tom, crouching, ran back through the tall grass, 
his going marked only by the swirl and wave of the 
grass closing above and behind him as he ran. He 
reported. A sharp command rang out. 

‘‘ Forward. Follow Captain Strong. When 
you’re in touch with the enemy, scatter to right and 
left and surround. Don’t try to rush them till we 
feel them out and And how strong they are.” 

In a few minutes Tom met Zed, creeping 
back. 

“ They’re in yon clump of timber,” said the old 
trapper. About three hundred of ’em. There’s 
whites with ’em.” 

Zed’s trained eyes had read the signs well. From 


32 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Detroit, Captain Caldwell, with three hundred In- 
dians and a few white men, had been rushed for- 
ward to meet the invasion, known days ago through 
the restless Indian sleuths who had trailed the 
troops and laughed low, blood-curdling laughs over 
their noisy lack of discipline. Almost as he spoke, 
a rifle cracked from the trees he had pointed out. 
The long, small-bored, heavy-barreled rifle of that 
day had a range of but 150 yards. The shot fell 
short. 

Instantly the frontiersmen, with a whoop, re- 
gardless of orders, rushed straight at the island of 
timber iii the sea of grass. When they were well 
within range, a crashing volley checked them. The 
next second another volley turned them back. 

‘‘ I told ye there wuz whites there. That’s dis- 
ciplined firin’. One rank fires while another reloads. 
Now let’s see the Cunnle handle this mob of ours.” 

Zed had pulled Tom down beside him in the 
grass and was muttering angrily into his ear. 

Colonel Crawford rallied his scared militia and 
deployed them about three sides of the enemy’s 
position. There was scattered firing until night- 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 33 

fall. Then the dispirited mob, who had been play- 
ing at being soldiers, made a rude camp, not so much 
because Crawford commanded it as because they 
wished it. The night was noiseless, save for an 
occasional shot from the outposts. At headquarters 
there was angry talk. Williamson was whining to 
retreat. Crawford was firm to fight. A chorus of 
backwoodsmen, thronging about the leaders, shouted 
approval of the cowardly course. 

“ It’s no use,” said one of their spokesmen. 
“ There’s a thousand Injuns there. I seen four 
hundred in one line poppin’ at us. If we stay, we’re 
dead men. And they’ll raid the settlements behind 
us while they hold us here. They’ll kill our wives 
and children. We belong home quick as we can git 
there. I’m goin’ now.” 

He was as good, or as bad, as his word. He 
did go. So did others, that night, and others, next 
day, while the little army lay supine; while Craw- 
ford vacillated between ordering an attack or or- 
dering a retreat; while twenty-four precious hours 
slipped by unused. 

About four o’clock Zed reported that 140 Shaw- 


34 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

nees had joined the British force. That was the last 
straw. When a Wyandot made a captive, he toma- 
hawked him and put his head on a pole, much as the 
heads of those who fought for “ Prince Charlie ” in 
1745, when the fascinating and faithless Stuarts 
made their last clutch for the crown England had 
taken from them, were put on spikes on Temple Bar, 
a low arch that spanned the Strand in London until 
some years ago. Then modern London sold this 
priceless memorial of London of old to a beer- 
brewer. But when a Shawnee or a Delaware made 
a captive, death was the least thing that captive 
suffered. 

The militia would retreat. They defied Craw- 
ford’s orders and fled under Williamson’s lead. 
The Indians of course instantly attacked. They 
hung upon the flanks of the fugitives for days. 
When the beaten and battered remnant reached 
Mingo Bottom, June thirteenth. Colonel Crawford 
was missing. So was Captain Tom Strong. 

Captain Zedediah Pratt arrived at Mingo Bot- 
tom the next day. He had fetched a wide circuit 
about some Indians who had cut him off from his. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 35 

fleeing comrades. The instant he found Tom was 
missing, he turned back and strode fiercely north- 
ward, bound to rescue “ his boy,” if Tom were alive; 
to avenge him, if Tom were dead. 

The forest swallowed him up. 


CHAPTER III 


yTY poor lad, I have brought you to an evil 
end.” 

It was Colonel Crawford who spoke. It was 
Tom to whom he spoke. 

They were together in a hut, bound hand and 
foot. A burly Indian sat in the doorway, making 
little splinters of wood. A knot of savages stood 
behind him, eying the prisoners with wolfish glances. 
One of them lounged in, spat. upon Crawford and 
struck Tom. The others laughed. 

“ Great Spirit smell roasted white man soon,” 
said the guard. 

Crawford and Tom were in a Shawnee village. 
On the night the militia fled, when the savages first 
attacked in force, Crawford had rallied his rear- 
guard and ordered a charge. He and Tom charged 
alone, only to fall captive. With their hands tied 
behind them, jeered, starving, and beaten, they had 

been taken northwestward for two days by half a 
36 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 37 

dozen Indians. They hoped their goal was Detroit, 
for the British, though they hounded on the In- 
dians to strike and slay, did what they could to pre- 
vent the torturing of the prisoners their savage 
allies took. But the march stopped short at a 
Shawnee town. There, for seven days, they had 
lain helpless, always bound, always watched. 

In Francis Parkman’s “ Conspiracy of Pontiac,” 
he describes the towns of the Five Nations in west- 
ern New York. These had served as patterns for 
the Shawnees. He says : Surrounded by waving 
maize fields, and encircled from afar by the green 
margin of the forest, stood the ancient strongholds 
of the confederacy. The clustering dwellings were 
encompassed by palisades, in single, double, or triple 
rows, pierced with loopholes. . . . The area which 
these defenses inclosed was often several acres in 
extent and the dwellings, ranged in order within, 
were sometimes more than a hundred feet in length. 
Posts, firmly driven into the ground, with an inter- 
vening framework of poles, formed the basis of the 
structure; and its sides and arched roof were closely 
covered with layers of elm bark. Each of the 


38 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

larger dwellings contained several distinct families, 
whose separate fires were built along the central 
space, while compartments on each side, like the 
stalls of a stable, afforded some degree of privacy. 
Here, rude couches were prepared, and bear- and 
deerskins spread; while above, the ripened ears of 
maize, suspended in rows, formed a golden tapes- 
try.” The lucid pages of Francis Parkman are a 
joy to read. His Indians are real, not like the fan- 
tastic puppets who stalk through the books of Feni- 
more Cooper. 

To-day the braves were returning from their 
chase of the militia. All day long they straggled 
into the village, whooping with glee over the scalps 
they brought, exhibiting their spoils, — horses, 
blankets, guns, knives, buckskin coats and trousers, 
smeared with the blood of their late wearers. All 
day long they thronged into the hut where Craw- 
ford and Tom were, in order to gloat over the vic- 
tims of the pitiless cruelty they were planning. It 
was a favorite jest to slap the faces of the prisoners 
with the scalps of the recent comrades of the help- 
less two. Tom, with set teeth, imitated Crawford’s 


Tom Strong, Boy-Caotain 39 

stoic calm. Not even the quiver of an eyelid gave 
sign of his suffering. One big Indian, who had 
cuffed him and kicked him, pricked him with a knife, 
and pretended to be about to scalp him, finally turned 
away with gruff praise : 

“ Heap brave boy.” 

I have led you to an evil end,” Crawford had 
said. 

“ It isn’t the end yet,” answered Tom. ‘‘ Zed will 
come to our aid — if he is alive. And it wasn’t 
your leadership, it was those cowards who would- 
n’t follow it, that brought you and me here. Colonel. 
If you get away. Colonel, and I — don’t — please 
say to my mother ” 

The boy’s voice died away and before he had 
mastered himself, some savages entered the hut, cut 
the thongs that bound them, jerked them to their 
feet and pushed them, stumbling, into the open. A 
deed almost too horrible to tell followed, but it is 
well we should know the price our gallant fore- 
fathers paid for the land we love. Tom was taken 
up a tree and lashed there. To make him look at 
the horrid scene below, an Indian sat beside him 


40 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

and prodded him with a glittering knife if his eyes 
closed in horror for an instant. A great stake had 
been driven into the ground and a circle of hickory 
wood piled around it, about four yards off. Craw- 
ford was stripped and fastened by a long rope to the 
pole, so that he could walk freely. The wood was 
lighted. He was ringed about with fire. He was 
forced to walk. Embers were thrown under his 
feet. Powder was shot into his body. For two 
hours, without an outcry, with his lips moving in 
prayer, the tortured man endured his agony. Then 
he fell. There was a whoop of savage joy. Simon 
Girty, laughing in the crowd below, turned to- 
wards Tom, shook his fist at him, and shouted : 

‘‘ Your turn next, young bantam ! 

An Indian leapt over the line of fire, scalped the 
dying man, and put flaming brands on the wound. 
Colonel Crawford staggered to his feet, took a few 
faltering steps, called out to Tom: “Good-by, my 
lad; we’ll meet in heaven”; and was fortunate 
enough to die. 

So perished a gallant man. In 1770, when 
George Washington floated down the Ohio as far as 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 41 

the Kanawha, to locate lands for a company which 
was seeking a grant from the King, he had with 
him a guide, George Croghan, a veteran Scotch- 
Irish Indian trader, and a surveyor, William Craw- 
ford. The two surveyors became fast friends. 
Crawford served under his great chief in the Con- 
tinental Army and rose to be a colonel. His blood 
was part of the price our country paid for the 
Mississippi Valley. 

When Tom was untied from his perch, he al- 
most fainted, but he whispered to himself, through 
bloodless lips: Die game; die game.” There was 
another stake driven into the ground a hundred feet 
away. Tom turned towards it, ready for all things. 
But his time had not come. It may be that even 
Girty was sated with cruelty for the nonce. It may 
be that the savages wished to prolong their pleasure 
into a two-days’ festival of savagery. Certain it is 
that the boy was taken back to the prison-hut and 
again bound and put under guard. A whole week 
passed. 

June 2 1 St, 1782, there was high festival in the 
Shawnee town. A delegation of Delawares had 


42 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

come to smoke the pipe of peace with the Shawnees 
and to dig up the hatchet for a joint raid on the 
settlements south of the Ohio. At dusk the council- 
chamber was full of warriors. The older men sat in 
a long oval. The young braves clustered in rows 
behind them. Lashed to a stout pole just within the 
doorway was Tom, brought there to grace his cap- 
tors’ triumph, just as captured barbarian kings were 
tied to Caesar’s chariot when he made triumphal 
entry into Rome. Opposite him, at the head of the 
oval, sat the Delaware chief, his face barred with 
paint, his hair bedecked with eagle feathers, his 
bronze body half covered by a blanket that had been 
snatched from a murdered woman’s bed. Other 
women, squaws, had embroidered it with gay 
splashes of color and with the gleaming quills of the 
porcupine. As Tom peered through the dusk at 
him, the boy gave an involuntary start, despite the 
thongs that bound him, for in that savage chieftain 
he recognized Bear-Who-Walks. The Delaware 
saw the start. He stared with absolutely blank eyes 
at the captive, but he carelessly put his hand to his 
side and then across his forehead, as he had done 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 43 

when he had christened Tom his blood-brother and 
bade him have no fear of the tomahawks of the 
Delawares. A faint hope stirred in Tom’s heart. 
Was Bear-Who-Walks signaling to him to 
hope? 

The pipe of peace was produced. It was carved 
of a sacred stone from Lake Superior, with sym- 
bolic decorations chiseled and painted. It passed 
from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth, about the 
inner group. When this silent ceremony was over, 
the oldest of the Shawnees rose, extended his arms, 
and said: 

“ Our hearts and our ears are open to our friends, 
the Delawares. Let them speak words of wisdom 
to their friends, the Shawnees.” 

A guttural assent sounded from a hundred savage 
throats. 

Then Bear-Who-Walks stood stately before them, 
his blanket cast aside, only a belt and a breech- 
clout upon him. In the belt was a tomahawk. It 
was of Birmingham steel and bore the legend: 
'' To My Trusty Friend, Bear-Who-Walks, From 
George III., Rex.” Many a chief had been flat- 


44 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

tered into fidelity by such a gift from the “ Great- 
King- Across-the-Sea.’' The Indian’s body was 
painted from face to foot with the vermilion and yel- 
low bars that spelled “ war.” He began with a 
glowing picture of their life before the white in- 
truders came. They were free and they hunted the 
game that swarmed upon a thousand hills and upon 
seas of prairie. Then the Long Knives came. The 
intruders had pushed the Indian back from the 
ocean, across the Alleghanies. Now they sought to 
push him still further back, across the Mississippi, 
into unknown regions where a myriad unfriendly 
tribes dwelt. But the Great-King-Across-the-Sea 
had promised that this should not be. He had sent 
them tomahawks and knives and guns. Flatboats 
laden with powder and bullets were even then ap- 
proaching Detroit, — “ all for us, all for the King’s 
friends, the Shawnees, and your friends, the Dela- 
wares, — all for us, if we will but dig up the hatchet 
and drive the Long Knives back to the mountains. 
The Shawnees routed the white men, but one moon 
ago. Here in this town, the Long Knives’ chief 
ate fire and died. Cannot the Shawnees and the 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 45 

Delawares together kill the few men that are left 
upon our lands? Let us go together. Let us re- 
turn together, laden with scalps and bringing cap- 
tives. Captives ! ” He grinned ferociously, lick- 
ing his lips as if he savored blood. “ The men to 
the stake; the women to our wigwams; the children 
to grow up in our tribes! The Delawares have 
spoken.” 

He loosed his tomahawk and flung it furiously 
downward. It quivered in the earthen floor. The 
Shawnee chief stepped forward, picked up the 
hatchet, and held it out to Bear-Who-Walks, saying: 

“ The Delawares have brought us wisdom. The 
warpath is open. Delawares and Shawnees will 
tread it together when the second moon comes and 
the maize is stored for the winter. Have I said 
well?” 

He turned to his tribesmen. They sprang to their 
feet. The awful war-whoop of the Indian rang 
out. The squaws, clustered outside, shrieked with 
delight. Then Simon Girty spoke: 

'' We have buffalo and venison for our friends, 
the Delawares, but we have something better with 


46 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

which to honor them. Here is a prisoner. He is a 
boy. He will scream under the torture. It will be 
a sweet sound in the ears of our guest. It will be 
music for our feast. Let us make a burnt offering 
of the white boy. To the stake ! ” 

Yells of joy approved the renegade’s suggestion. 
Tom’s blood ran cold. 

Bear-Who-Walks was on his feet again. He 
had sat impassive while his harangue was being 
answered, while the war-whoop sounded, while 
Girty spoke. Now he lifted his hand and there was 
silence. 

‘‘ It is well. My ears long for that music.” 

“ There is no hope,” thought Tom. ‘‘ And I let 
him go free. God bless Zed. God help my mother. 
Poor Mother.” 

My ears long for that music,” repeated the 
speaker, “ but my eyes long to enjoy the enemy’s 
suffering too. Look, the night has fallen. Let the 
boy be put to the torture in full sunshine, when we 
can see him writhe in his agony, when we can note 
every flicker of pain that passes over his face, when 
we can see his very eyeballs burst ! ” 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 47 

Our guest has spoken. The white boy burns an 
hour after sunrise. Take him away.” 

So the Shawnee chief summed up the situation. 
Tom was led back to his hut. The braves began 
their feast. 

The boy’s mind was in a whirl. Did Bear-Who- 
Walks mean to help him? He had certainly kept 
him alive over night, but he avowed doing so in 
order to enjoy more thoroughly seeing him tor- 
tured to-morrow. What good was this one night 
more? Yet hope, not to be denied, beat upon the 
door of his heart, opened it, and passed within. 
If Bear-Who-Walks really meant to save his 
“ blood-brother,” he would try to do so that night. 
Tom decided to stay awake and stay hopeful. His 
guard bent over him with a flaring torch to make 
sure he was strongly bound. The savage showed 
him a basket of sweet-scented grass, full of pine- 
splinters, and by way of bidding him good-night 
said : 

“ Stick um all over you. Light um. You jump. 
You scream. Injun have fun.” 

Then he and his light went out. All was silence. 


48 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Silence for weary hours, broken only by the shuf- 
fling step of an occasional dog. One dog apparently 
stopped beside the hut. Tom heard a noise as of a 
hound pawing the earth. There was a draught of 
fresh air. A hand came through under the bottom 
log. It held a knife that cut the thongs about Tom’s 
hands. Then the knife was dropped. Bear-Who- 
Walks whispered: “ Kill guard. Him asleep. Crawl 
to big cornfield. Me meet blood-brother there.” 

Tom did not kill the guard, who lay across the 
doorway, his arm around the basket of pine- 
splinters, but he stepped over him after he had 
slashed away the other thongs. Then he crawled 
to the cornfield. Bear-Who-Walks was there. He 
guided the boy across the field. He put him on a 
horse, a bit of cloth for a saddle, a halter for a 
bridle.' He pointed to a star glittering in the east- 
ern horizon. He said : “ Ride hard. No sleep. Ride 
towards star. Four days, reach Fort Pitt.” Before 
the boy could utter a syllable of thanks, the Indian 
had vanished into darkness. 

Tom galloped towards the star, urging the good 
horse to utmost speed. Therein was his one chance 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 49 

of safety. His flight was sure to be discovered by 
sunrise or before. Pursuit, swift, vengeful, the 
pursuit of a panther robbed of his prey, was also 
sure. And his trail was sure to be found. Through 
the night that flashed by and through the early 
morning hours he galloped at full speed. Some 
seventy miles from the Shawnee town, his gallant 
mount began to stumble. Then it fell with the 
death-rattle in its throat. The Indian and the horse 
had done what they could. Now the boy must save 
himself. He ran steadily towards the rising sun, 
trying to leave a trackless path behind him, turning 
from a straight course only to seek the shelter of the 
scattered timber or to dash up the channels of little 
brooks, so that the savages he knew were seeking 
him might at least be delayed on their blood-hunt. 
Now the serried ranks of the Big Woods rose up 
before him, only a few miles away. Once in them, 
his chance of escape would be doubled. With a 
heart that beat as if it would burst, he ran as never 
before. The prairie was now rolling in long swells 
towards the forest. As he reached the last “di- 
vide” — that is what the prairie-crests are called 


50 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

in the West of to-day — he glanced back and a 
groan came from him. Over the divide behind 
rushed a mounted Indian. As he saw Tom he ut- 
tered a wild whoop, beckoned to unseen braves 
behind him, and sped on. Three hundred yards lay 
between Tom and the timber. It was impossible to 
reach it before the Indian would be upon him. 
What chance had he then, with only the knife Bear- 
Who-Walks had given him, against his pursuer 
with tomahawk, knife, and gun? 

“ He’ll try to take me alive,” thought Tom, ‘‘ so 
he won’t shoot. I won’t be taken alive. I’ll fight 
till he kills me. Better that than to die as Crawford 
died.” 

The Indian caught up with him a scant hundred 
yards from the forest. He leaped from his pant- 
ing horse and rushed at the boy, who clutched his 
knife and awaited the attack. It never came. The 
sharp crack of a rifle sounded from the woods. 
The savage, tomahawk in hand, turned slowly in 
his tracks and fell dead. Tom stood still, dazed. 

“ Run, run, ye coot, run ! ” 

Zed came leaping and shouting towards him. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 51 

Tom ran to him. The trapper caught his out- 
stretched hand, whirled about, and sped toward 
shelter. Man and boy took the long leaps that had 
saved them from the Hessians in the flight from 
Flatbush and that saved them from a far worse foe 
to-day. Three Indians raced over the divide in 
time to see the fugitives disappear into the fringe 
of the Big Woods. With a fierce yell they galloped 
forward, passing their dead comrade, shrieking for 
revenge. 

A few feet within the timber-line. Zed stopped, 
caught up the extra rifle he had left there when he 
ran forward, pressed it into Tom’s hands, and 
rapidly reloaded his own gun. 

“ Take the devil on the chestnut horse,” he said. 
“ I’ll answer for the one on the gray. If the third 
one doesn’t stop, we have our knives against his 
gun.” 

Both rifles cracked. 

The Indian on the gray horse crumpled into a 
heap on the ground. Tom’s unsteady aim found 
the chestnut stallion, but not the brave upon him. 
Down went the horse and down behind him the 


52 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Indian flung himself, using the dead animal as a 
cover and driving a bullet to the spot whence Zed 
and Tom had fired. They were ten feet on one 
side of it now. The third savage jerked his horse 
upon its haunches, slid to the ground, and fired 
across its back. The bullet sped harmlessly by. 
Zed did not waste shots in that way. His next one 
tore through horse and man. He seized Tom’s rifle 
then, and as the last living foe left the shelter of the 
dead stallion. Zed drove a bullet into his shoulder. 
The way he ran showed it was but a flesh-wound. 
Zed turned to Tom. 

We mustn’t stop to scalp. There’ll be others 
cornin’. We must run. Come, boy.” 

Tom stared at him vacantly. The stress and. 
strain and sleeplessness had been too much for the 
boy. He sank to the ground. 

“ I can’t run any more. Zed. I’ll just stay here. 
Thank you for coming. Zed. I knew you would. I 
told Colonel Crawford so. They burned him. Zed. 
I saw it. You run. Zed. I can’t.” 

His head sank lower still. He had fainted. He 
came to his senses, drenched with the water the 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 53 

trapper had thrown upon him, to find Zed on his 
knees beside him, rubbing him vigorously and plead- 
ing with him. 

“ Tom, Tom, my boy. Think of your mother. 
Tom, think of your mother. Fll stay and die with 
ye, Tom, if ye can’t run, but think of your mother.” 

The fine old man had chosen a potent charm with 
which to conjure back Tom’s courage and strength. 
The thought of the mother who had given him life 
gave him life again. With Zed’s help, he climbed 
slowly to his feet and staggered weakly into the 
woods. Tom remembered little of the days and 
nights that followed, and Zed would never talk 
about them. He had dim memories of trying to 
stop and lie down; of insisting that he must sleep; 
of praying for food; of hoping to die. He often 
leaned upon Zed as they walked, he thought. He 
half remembered being lifted and held in the trap- 
per’s sinewy arms sometimes as they struggled 
ahead. Berries were their only food, and few of 
them. So Zed brought him, half-conscious, on the 
seventh day, to the banks of the Ohio, where Pitts- 
burgh now flings her flames to the sky and where. 


54 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

then, the solitary Fort Pitt flaunted the flag of the 
free. Captain Tom Strong saluted his country’s 
flag and knew nothing more until the fierce fever 
that fell upon him spent itself. Zed had sat by his 
rude bed for weeks. With the tenderness of a 
woman, he nursed ‘‘ his boy ” back to life and 
health. 

While the fever lasted, the Shawnees and Dela- 
wares had made the foray Tom had heard planned 
in the Council Chamber of the Shawnee town. It 
was Kentucky’s bloodiest year. They swept the 
settlements south of the Ohio, ravaging and slaying. 
They were beaten off at Brady’s Station in August, 
1782, where one of the besieged was a baby, named 
Richard Johnson. Thirty years afterwards, in the 
War of 1812 with England, he led the Kentucky 
riflemen at the battle of the Thames, where Te- 
cumseh and Simon Girty, with sixty years of hell- 
ish cruelty on his soul, were killed. Now, as they 
fell back from Brady’s Station, several hundred 
riflemen pursued them and attacked them, against 
Daniel Boone’s advice, at the Blue Licks, August 
nineteenth. In five minutes the riflemen were 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 55 

routed, Israel Boone and many others were dead, 
and Daniel Boone just escaped capture. Others 
were less fortunate. They furnished savage sport 
in many a Shawnee town under the placid sunshine 
of September. But the smoke of their torment did 
not ascend to heaven in vain. 

November 4th, 1782, Colonel George Rogers 
Clark left the Ohio with 1,050 men. November 
loth, he fell like a thunderbolt on the nearest In- 
dian town. He burned the towns of the Indians 
and the cabins of the British traders almost to the 
doors of Detroit. He burned the corn and the 
jerked meat stored away for the coming winter. 
He recaptured the few remaining captives. He 
routed the British commandant, who came down 
from Detroit to drive him back. 

As Clark had saved Indiana and Illinois, in 1778, 
so in 1782 he saved Kentucky by his triumphs in 
Ohio. The Dark and Bloody Ground became defi- 
nitely the white man’s land. 

Meanwhile Zed and Tom were on their eastward 
way, to join the First Continental Regiment, of 
which they were captains. The Revolutionary War 


56 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

had ended at Yorktown, as Alexander Hamilton 
had told Zed it would end. But the treaty of peace 
had not yet been signed. Benjamin Franklin and 
his colleagues were in Paris for that purpose, but 
the English government dallied and delayed. So 
Washington and Rochambeau, the gallant French- 
man whose troops made ours irresistible at. York- 
town, had their headquarters at Newburgh on the 
Hudson. The unfurloughed part of our little army 
was there. The First Continentals were Wash- 
ington’s bodyguard. When Zed reported his and 
Tom’s arrival at Fort Pitt, Captain Pratt and Cap- 
tain Strong were ordered to rejoin their regiment. 


CHAPTER IV 


TN the drawing-room of the Hasbrouck house, 
headquarters at Newburgh, sat General Wash- 
ington. The room is still to be seen. The old house 
was built by Jonathan Hasbrouck, Huguenot, whose 
ancestor had fled from France that he might wor- 
ship God in the way that seemed fit to him. It was 
a one-story dwelling, with but seven rooms. The 
Marquis de Chastellux, who was the General’s guest 
there, wrote : This house, which is built like a 
Dutch cabin, is neither vast nor commodious. . . . 
[The] dining-room . . . has seven doors and a 
single window.” The parlor of the Pierce house, 
built at Dorchester, Mass., in 1640, has nine doors. 
The Marquis was, perhaps, prejudiced because he 
had to sleep on a camp-bed in the drawing-room. 
This was both office and reception-room for Wash- 
ington. His brow was dark with care. With him 
was General Schuyler, the great patroon and gal- 
lant gentleman of whom you have read in “ Tom 
57 


58 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Strong, Washington’s Scout.” Schuyler had come 
down the river from Albany to consult with the 
Commander-in-Chief. The war was over, but trou- 
bles worse than war seemed imminent. Congress 
could not pay off the troops. The only way Con- 
gress had to raise money was to entreat the sepa- 
rate States to supply it. Every State had troubles 
of its own and gave scant heed to such entreaty. 
The Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1777, 
which held the thirteen States loosely together, were 
becoming a rope of sand. The Congress grew more 
discredited daily. It had been turned out of In- 
dependence Hall in Philadelphia by eighty drunken 
and mutinous soldiers who marched there from 
Lancaster, defying their officers. Congress had 
asked protection from the Governor of Pennsyl- 
vania and asked in vain. It fled before the eighty 
mutineers to Princeton. Thence it begged the 
States for bread for the starving soldiery of Inde- 
pendence and got only a stony silence in answer. 
There were rumors of revolt at Newburgh. Wash- 
ington had sternly put by the kingly crown he was 
urged to take at the hands of his army, but the 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 59 

wronged and justly discontented troops were being 
urged to seize upon the government and pay them- 
selves,: — urging that was potent when being paid 
meant being fed. Starving stomachs do not make 
for cool heads. So Washington and Schuyler spoke 
of weighty things in low tones and with measured 
speech. 

In the hallway without the drawing-room, things 
equally weighty to the two persons there were being 
discussed in gay tones with gay laughter. Colonel 
Alexander Hamilton, a fine figure in his blue and 
buff, Washington’s favorite aide-de-camp, was woo- 
ing Mistress Elizabeth (Betsey) Schuyler, who had 
come down the river with her stately father, well 
aware that there were other games than war to 
play and that Colonel Hamilton played well the 
game of love. She was looking up at him through 
demure lashes and shooting arrows at him with her 
Cupid’s bow of a mouth. 

“ Now that the war is over, is Colonel Alexander, 
like Alexander the Great, sighing for new worlds 
to conquer? ” said Mistress Betsey. 


6o Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

‘‘ In truth I am sighing to conquer a new world,” 
Hamilton ardently answered, “ but its queen is far 
more difficult to conquer than King George 
was.” 

“ That took five years. Should a queen surrender 
sooner? Abraham spent seven years, if I remem- 
ber aright.” 

“ And I shall spend a lifetime if a blessed sur- 
render does not come sooner.” 

Ahem ! ” said a loud voice. Colonel Hamilton, 
who had his back to the doorway, whirled about. 
For once in his life, he was not glad to see Zed 
Pratt, who stood in the door saluting. Behind him 
was Tom. 

We wuz told to come in and report to ye, 
Cunnle,” said Zed, '' but- ” 

“ I was waiting for you. Captain,” answered 
Hamilton, a bit stiffly, while Betsey Schuyler whis- 
pered : “ Oh, I thought you were waiting on me. 
As I was so mistaken, it behooves me to retreat — 
with the honors of war, of course.” 

“ Stay. I wish to present to your Ladyship 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 6i 

Captain Pratt and Captain Strong of the First Con- 
tinentals. They arrived to-day from the Ohio coun- 
try, where they have been fighting fiercer savages 
than even those you know. You will not mind their 
buckskins.. Faith, few of us are dressed so well. 
Lady Elizabeth Schuyler, Captain Pratt — Captain 
Strong.” 

She swept a wonderful courtesy as the man and 
boy bowed low to her beauty and to her famous 
name. 

“ You may not be interested to know that the two 
captains saved my life at Yorktown,” began Hamil- 
ton, but Zed interrupted. 

“ Now, Cunnle, ye know ’twas the boy did 
that. I didn’t do nothin’. Why, ma’am, — I mean 
Your Ladyship, — the boy here took the whole 
redoubt ” 

And saved Colonel Hamilton’s life besides! 
What happiness ! ” 

‘‘ Such happiness is yours for the taking. Will 
you take it ? ” murmured Hamilton, but with a trill 
of birdlike laughter and another gracious courtesy 


62 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Betsey Schuyler trailed demurely along the paneled 
hall. 

Hamilton’s eyes followed her longingly, then 
turned to the two captains. The longing was now 
superseded by anxiety. 

“ The Commander-in-Chief ordered you back be- 
cause there is trouble in your regiment. He needs 
you.” 

Washington needed them! That was indeed 
great news. 

‘‘ The Gineral needs us, needs Tom and me? 
But why? And what’s the trouble in the old rigi- 
ment ? ” 

The Congress can’t pay off the arrears. It can 
hardly give the men food every other day. Flesh 
and blood can scarcely stand it. It’s no wonder 
some of the soldiers are mutinous, but if the First 
Continentals turn against him it will break the Gen- 
eral’s heart. He is going to talk to the troops 
to-morrow. Do you both get out among them — 
you’re popular with them — and prepare their minds 
to stand by the Chief.” 

‘‘ We’ll prepare ’em,”, said Zed. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 63 

The two saluted and started to begin their mis- 
sion. 

Just a minute,” said Hamilton. He gave Tom 
a beaming, quizzical smile that sent little thrills 
through the boy. Why did the Colonel look at him 
that way? What was going to happen? 

“ Just a minute. Before you go. Captain Strong, 
you might walk into the dining-room yonder. You 
may find some one there you know.” 

As Tom walked toward the half-open door. Zed 
whispered : 

‘‘ His mother?” 

Hamilton nodded a smiling “ yes.” 

Tom had passed through the doorway. There was 
a great cry, “Mother!” There was a sound of 
rushing feet. There was a long embrace. And 
then a woman’s utterly tender voice was heard: 
“ My son, whom God gave. My son, whom God 
hath brought back to me. Blessed be the name of 
the Lord, Whose mercy endureth forever.” 

Reverently, Hamilton and Zed withdrew. 

The morrow was a lovely day. The French 


64 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

troops, regularly paid by a King beyond the ocean, 
were kept within their own lines. The Americans, 
regularly unpaid by their own folk at home, 
swarmed in disorder to the appointed meeting- 
place. The gathering was a brilliant bit of strategy 
on Washington’s part. It had been projected by his 
enemies. The plan was to arrange a meeting, throw 
off allegiance to both Commander and Congress, 
and put in power for their own bad purposes the 
malcontents who had loosed the tempest and thought 
they could ride the storm. The Chief rode it in- 
stead. When he heard of the movement it had 
progressed so far that a meeting of the discontented 
was inevitable It had to be. So Washington 
called it himself, presided over it, swayed it to his 
own righteous ends. Never were engineers more 
neatly hoisted with their own petard than General 
Gates’s staff-officers. Colonel Barber and Major 
Armstrong, were by this masterly stroke of a mas- 
terly man. 

The great patriot spoke from the pulpit of the 
church where the soldiers met. The surroundings 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 65 

sobered his hearers and the earnestness of the 
speaker, pleading to them to preserve the nation 
they had, under his guidance, created, thrilled them 
through and through. He spoke of Boston and of 
Lexington, of Long Island and of Saratoga, of Val- 
ley Forge and of Yorktown. He painted, now in 
vivid periods, now in words that halted, their suf- 
ferings and their triumphs. With faltering speech, 
while unaccustomed tears coursed down his cheeks, 
he spoke of Benedict Arnold. He did not need to 
point the moral there or adorn the tale. That shaft 
went straight through to their hearts. They had 
starved for a hope at Valley Forge. Could not they 
starve for a glorious certainty now, if need be? It 
was a manly speech to manly men. The First Con- 
tinentals, distributed under Zed’s and Tom’s guid- 
ance throughout the church, led in the solemn roar 
of applause that swept every doubter off his feet 
and told Washington he had gained yet another 
great victory. When at the end, he tried to read a 
letter from a member of the Congress and found the 
lines of it swam before his eyes, he put on a pair of 


66 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

great spectacles. It was the first time he had worn 
them in public. With a rather tremulous smile, he 
said : “ I have grown gray in your service and now 
find myself growing blind.” 

Tom leapt to his feet. 

Three cheers for the General ! ” he cried. 

The old church rocked to the sound of the shout- 
ing. 

The winter passed quietly at Newburgh. Wash- 
ington waited for the definitive peace that did not 
come. Rochambeau and his white-uniformed sol- 
diers, their banners spangled with the lilies of Bour- 
bon France, marked time beside him. Sir Guy 
Carleton and a British garrison held New York. 
George III was still King on Manhattan Island. 
Hamilton prospered in his wooing, but Mistress 
Betsey Schuyler had not yet given her queenly con- 
sent. She came to Newburgh whenever her father 
did, and that was often. She and Mrs. Strong be- 
came great friends, partly because each was willing 
to extol the other’s hero. Mrs. Strong would listen 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 67 

forever to the girl’s charming confidences about 
the man who had won her heart. And Miss Schuy- 
ler never wearied of hearing tales of Tom’s prowess. 
She knew, word for word, the story of how he 
saved Hamilton’s life when the redoubt was taken 
at Yorktown. 

One day she knocked at the door of the widow’s 
room in one of the old homes of Newburgh. Two 
or three officers and their wives occupied most of 
it. Mrs. Strong was comfortably housed in the at- 
tic, with a spare room for Tom when he was off 
duty. She called Come in,” and rose to receive 
Miss Schuyler, who took a bundle from the black 
mammy who had waddled upstairs behind her — 
there were still slaves in New York — and closed the 
door upon the maid. 

“ What is that mighty bundle ? ” asked the 
widow. 

‘‘ Captain Strong’s buckskins look as if they were 
wearing out,” answered the girl. “ So brave a man 
should have his uniform. Father has enough buff 
and blue to clothe a regiment. He vows he’ll wear 


68 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

naught else all his life. So I cut off a few 
yards " 

“ Your Ladyship is most kind,” Mrs. Strong in- 
terrupted with formality and finality, “ but the 
Strongs do not accept such presents.” 

As My Ladyship— and sure ’tis most unkind of 
you to call me by that horrid stiff name; you know 
my name is Betsey — as My Ladyship well knows, 
which is the reason Father told me he would sell 
Captain Strong the horrid cloth and be paid when 
the Congress pays him. And so I cut off a few 
y a rds — and — and ’ ’ 

Here Betsey Schuyler began to cry, as the simple 
emotionalism of that day permitted, nay, required 
“ elegant females ” to do when their feelings were 
hurt. Nowadays, under such circumstances, their 
descendants say sharp things and try to hurt other 
people’s feelings. The elegant female method is 
rather the better of the two. Mrs. Strong kissed 
her and forgave her for having done nothing wrong, 
and probably herself shed a tear or two before the 
girl was quite herself again. 

You may be sure the cloth was eagerly accepted 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 69 

on the terms proposed. Cloth was cloth in those 
days, especially when it was woven for men like 
Schuyler to wear. When the bundle was unrolled, 
the widow said : 

“ There’s enough for two uniforms. Tom doesn’t 
need two.” 

“ But Captain Pratt ought to have one, too, ought- 
n’t he?” 

“ Ah, my dear, you don’t forget dear old Zed 
was with Colonel Hamilton, too, that famous night 
at Yorktown, when God preserved them all, God 
be praised.” 

“ God be praised, indeed. It would kill me to 
have the Colonel die.” 

It did not kill her, for when, twenty-two years 
later, a score of years after she was wedded to him, 
Hamilton fell on the dueling-ground in Weehawken, 
with Aaron Burr’s bullet in his great heart, she 
had to live for the sake of the children she had 
borne him. Her husband was enshrined in her loyal 
heart forever. It is chiefly to her that we owe the 
knowledge that Hamilton wrote the substance of 
Washington’s famous Farewell Address. 


70 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

“ There’s a splendid tailor in the Connecticut 
regiment,” said Lady Elizabeth, a moment later. 
“ Send him the cloth and he’ll soon have your cap- 
tains spick and span as my Colonel.” 

“ Not a tailor touches the cloth,” said Mistress 
Strong. “ I made every suit Tom ever wore until 
he got into the army, and I won’t lose a chance 
like this. Ah, some day you’ll know what it means 
to a mother to do something for the son she loves.” 

Mistress Betsey had her doubts as to her friend’s 
prowess with the needle, compared to that of the 
Connecticut tailor, but she wisely held her peace. 

Then what scenes in the widow’s attic. Tom 
was bidden stand here and stand there; he was 
measured up and down and around and around; 
feminine tapes were wound about him; sections of 
a coat, as things progressed, were actually pinned 
upon him. Never was a bold soldier so completely 
under feminine domination. She won an equal 
victory over Zed. She would have none but her- 
self make Zed’s unifo/m. Zed was her son, too, she 
declared. Never mind his being twenty-five years 
older than she was; she didn’t believe it; and if he 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 71 

was, it made no difference; he was still her son and 
she was going to make the uniforms of both her 
boys. 

“ I wish I could make one for my third son, too,’’ 
said Mother Strong. 

“Your third son? And who is he. Mother 
mine?” laughed Tom. 

“ Why, Hans Rolf, of course. You sound like 
him, for he calls me ‘ meine mutter.’ Don’t you 
remember Hans ? ” 

“ Of course we do,” shouted Zed. “ He saved 
the boy’s life at Fort Washington, ma’am ” 

“ God bless him,” quoth the boy’s grateful 
mother. 

“And jined our army after Trenton. The last 
we saw or heard of Hans, he was marchin’ away, 
talkin’ Dutch-English to the boys, with a farm in his 
haversack.” 

“ And a halter ’round his neck if the British 
caught him,” added Tom 

“ They never did catch him,” his mother an- 
swered, “ and his farm is near York in Pennsyl- 
vania.” 


72 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

“ However do you know? ” 

“ Last year, a Hessian who’d been taken prisoner 
and then exchanged came to our house. He couldn’t 
talk much English, but he managed to say : ‘ Some- 
dings fer you, leddy. Hans Rolf, he sends it,’ and 
he handed me the biggest sausage you ever saw ! ” 

“A sausage! Good old Hans! ’Twas a love 
token. Mother.” 

“ Hush, you silly boy. You know he always 
called himself your twin and called me ‘ meine 
mutter.’ Do boys fall in love with their mothers? ” 

“ They’re born in love with them and they stay 
so,” shouted Tom, and hugged his mother hard. 

'' Yes, they do fall in love with ’em. Mother 
Strong, and they stay so,” said Zed, and kissed her 
hand. 

“ Well,” said the joint mother, looking fondly at 
her boys, “ I was disappointed that Hans hadn’t 
written me, and I tried to get some news of him 
from the other Hessian, but his stock of English 
had been used up by 'what he’d said already. So 
when he was gone, I started to cook the sausage. 
It was too big to cook all at once, so I cut it in two 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 73 

— and found a letter in it. Hans says he has a 
farm and a wife, who talks German, and a baby, 
and when the war’s over he’s going to send to Hesse 
for his real mother, and he wants you and Zed and 
me to come there and live with him forever and for- 
ever and forever.” 

‘‘ Good old Hans ” — Dutchy is a good fellow,” 
said Tom and Zed simultaneously. “We’ll sure 
go ’n’ visit old Hans some day,” added Zed. 

Mrs. Strong went on with her task. She had to 
climb upon a chair to measure Zed’s length, but 
she overcame every obstacle and turned out two as 
fine uniforms as Newburgh ever saw. Her two 
boys in buff and blue were as “ trig fra’ top to toe ” 
as any John Anderson that ever went courting in 
Scotland or America. And be it recorded that when 
the Congress did at last partly pay Tom and Zed, 
they fully paid the generous Schuyler for the cloth 
that had changed them from tramps in buckskin to 
officers in uniform. 

There were people in Newburgh who vied with 
Mrs. Strong in admiration of Tom in his new garb. 
One of them was a girl with peaches and cream in 


74 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

her face, love and laughter in her eyes, and gold, 
not in her pocket, but in a better place, her heart. 
The Widow Strong liked her, even after she knew 
Betsey Carhart loved her son, — which is a great deal 
for a mother to do. The mother knew it, but the 
son did not. Betsey was two years younger than 
Tom, from one standpoint, far older from an- 
other. The boy liked her, but did not yet dream 
of more than like. They called each other “ Bet- 
sey ” and “ Tom ” in the frank fashion of the day, 
but Tom left her gayly when his country next called 
him. 

The call came soon. The First Continentals and 
nearly all the rest of the remaining army had been 
furloughed April 19th, 1783, the eighth anniversary 
of “ the shot heard ’round the world,” the shot fired 
at Concord and Lexington. Zed, refusing all offers 
to stay forever with the mother who had adopted 
him, heard the call of the Wild too strongly to keep 
longer away from the wilderness. Tom’s bones 
tingled for days with the bear-hug the trapper gave 
him in saying “ good-by.” 

“ I’ll be back,” said Zed. “ I’ll see ye and the 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 75 

mother — God bless her — again. But Fll see the 
Father-of-Waters first. Fll see where the buffalo 
come from. Fll see the other side of the Mississippi, 
where one day there’ll be great States, States as big 
as Old Virginia. Do ye s’pose these United 
States’ll stop at that river, howsumever big it be? 
No, I won’t see it, son, but you’ll see the flag we 
fought for cover a country that stretches from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific. Fm going to the Promised 
Land. Fm only sixty-seven. There’s lots of life in 
the old trapper yit. Fll be back, son. God bless ye. 
Good-by.” 

Then came the bear-hug and the going of Zed. 
He left Tom lonely. Washington kept him at head- 
quarters and kept him busy there. He saw the 
Commander-in-Chief often and Colonel Hamilton 
continually. His mother was near him. Betsey 
Carhart always welcomed him, though with maid- 
enly reserve. But he was lonely without Zed. 

At last the good news came. The treaty of peace 
was signed at Paris in 1782 and ratified September 
3d, 1783. The independence of the United States 
was acknowledged. A new nation was baptized into 


76 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

the family of nations. It was a feeble child, but it 
had room to grow from the Atlantic to the Miss- 
issippi, though England held Canada to the north 
and northwest and Spain owned Florida and all the 
shores of the Gulf of Mexico to the south and 
half a continent to the west. It was weeks before 
Washington at Newburgh and Sir Guy Carleton 
at New York learned that George the Third had 
ceased to be King over Manhattan Island. When 
slow sails brought the news, the white-clad French- 
men marched to Boston and thence sailed home 
from the land they had so greatly helped, and the 
scarlet-clad Englishmen got ready to sail home from 
New York. 

November 24th, 1783, the Van Cortlandt house, 
at the southern end of what is now Van Cortlandt 
Park, at Broadway and 242d Street, New York 
City, was the center of a busy scene. George Wash- 
ington was there, with a bevy of aides-de-camp, 
among them Alexander Hamilton and Tom Strong, 
ready to march into town the next day and take pos- 
session of the last bit of anything but frontier soil 
held by the redcoats in the name of their King. 



Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 77 

There were eight hundred Continental troops with 
him, veterans of five years of fighting and two 
years of waiting for independence, honor, and peace. 
Fair women welcomed Washington to the old house. 


VAN CORTLANDT HOUSE, BUILT IN 1748 

which still stands in its pristine glory, open to 
every citizen of these United States. It is now an 
historical museum. You can see in the southwest 
corner of the second floor the room where Wash- 
ington slept the night that made the house famous. 
It is still furnished in part as it was then. It is 
pleasant to fancy the soldier and statesman sitting 
late that evening before the great fireplace, study- 


78 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

ing the glowing embers of the wood fire. Whatever 
he saw in them of his country’s future, whatever he 
fancied might be her glory in time to come, has 
been more than realized by the resistless rush of 
America to imperial strength. The eighteenth cen- 
tury saw our abolition of kingcraft. The nineteenth 
saw our abolition of slavery. May the twentieth 
see our abolition of poverty! That is more than 
a dream of Arcadia. Some day it will surely 
come to pass. 

Just after Washington went upstairs, an orderly 
said to Tom: 

The General wishes to see you in his bedroom.” 

Tom followed the orderly. The man tapped on 
the door, was bidden to enter, and ushered Tom in. 
Then he himself withdrew. 

“ Be seated. Captain.” 

“ Your Excellency has done me the honor of 
sending for me ? ” 

Tom supposed he was to be told to attend to some 
details of the morrow’s march and was rather puz- 
zled at being bidden to sit down. It was an age of 
ceremonial. Few men sat down when Washington 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 79 

was in the room ; none without being told to do so. 

The great patriot looked keenly at the boy whom 
he had first seen at Nathan Hale’s side, on Brook- 
lyn Heights, seven years before. 

After a scrutiny which seemed long to its sub- 
ject, he said : 

What are you going to do with yourself. Cap- 
tain, now that your country’s need of you will no 
longer take all your time ? She will need you always, 
but not so exclusively as she has while you were 
passing through your boyhood. Colonel Hamilton 
tells me he thinks you are not overwell provided 
with worldly gear.” 

The boy smiled as if in gay defiance of the world 
from which he had to wring his future. 

My mother owns our little home on Broad 
Street, and has a tiny income of her own, barely 
enough for her modest wants. I don’t know what I 
shall do. General, but I guess I won’t have to beg. 
I’m ready to work hard, and Zed — I beg Your Ex- 
cellency’s pardon, I mean Captain Zedediah 
Pratt ” 

Washington nodded and smiled. '' Yes, I know 


8o Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

the old trapper. You and he rowed me across the 
Hudson after the battle of Long Island. He won 
his commission at the Cowpens. He dined with me 
at West Point, when he brought me General 
Greene’s message that took me to Yorktown. Well, 
my boy, what about your friend ‘ Zed ’ ? ” 

He has taught me to do many things. Your Ex- 
cellency.” 

“ You have seen something of the West, I know.” 

Tom bowed. 

“ In 1753 I went on a mission to the French at 
Fort du Quesne, now, thank God, our Fort Pitt. 
I went part way there with poor Braddock in 1755. 
In 1770, I went down the Ohio as far as the Kana- 
wha. With me was a man who became my dear and 
valued friend. Colonel Crawford. • You saw him 
done to death by the Shawnees.” 

Washington stopped a moment, in honor of the 
dead. Then he went on calmly: 

Two months ago I went up the Mohawk and 
Genesee valleys, in New York. It is my purpose, 
as soon as my affairs are settled at home, to study 
a route for a canal from the Chesapeake to the 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 8i 

Ohio. I tell you these things because they have im- 
pressed me with the belief that the real future of 
our country will be wrought out beyond the Alle- 
ghanies and that our great duty now is to forge 
strong links between ourselves of the East and 
the Western folk. We must bind these people to 
us by a chain that can never be broken. We must 
have constant communication with them. That com- 
munication will be best served by canals and rivers. 
You will see the Ohio thronged with canal-boats 
from Baltimore and Philadelphia, perhaps even from 
New York. But there is to be a means of communi- 
cation far better than canal-boats. My boy, there 
will be such things as steamboats, steamboats that 
can breast the currents of our great rivers and can — 
going with the currents — make perhaps as much as 
eight or ten miles an hour! When the steamboat 
links together the East and the West, there will be 
no danger of that great region’s breaking away from 
our country’s flag.” 

“A boat moved by steam?” Tom gasped in 
amazement. 

I have been sure of it ever since James Watt 


82 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

made his first steam-engine. That was nearly 
twenty years ago. He began making steam-engines 
to sell just about as we began making war against 
his King. Do you know the story of his inven- 
tion?” 

“ No, Your Excellency.” 

“ He was a poor boy, a very poor boy. One day, 
seated in the kitchen of his father s little house, he 
saw the lid of a kettle in which water was being 
boiled lift up. He knew it could not lift itself; that 
something must have lifted it; that whatever did lift 
it was power. He made up his mind to tame that 
power and to force it to work for him and other 
people. And he has done so. James Watt’s tea- 
kettle will yet puff up and down the Hudson and 
the Delaware, the Ohio and the Mississippi. And it 
will bind us all together. North and South and East 
and West, into one great nation that will finally 
cover the Continent. Do you want to help that bind- 
ing, Captain Strong?” 

“ I would do so most gladly. Your Excellency, but 
how ? What can a poor boy like me do to help ? ” 

“ There is an ingenious mechanic named Rum- 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 83 

sey — James Rumsey — at the little settlement of 
Shepherdstown on the Potomac, not a great many 



JAMES WATT 

miles from Mt. Vernon,” Washington answered. 
‘‘ He has been trying for two years to perfect a 



84 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

steam-driven boat and he thinks he is near success. 
I have helped him with a little money from time to 
time — though, faith, ’tis little I have had to spare — 
and now he writes me this.” 

He handed a letter to Tom. It was a crude, ill- 
spelt epistle, full of the fiery hopes of a sanguine in- 
ventor. It sketched his experiments, his failures, 
why he thought he had failed, his belief in coming 
success. It ended with these words : 

“If Your Excellency will back me with some 
more munney and send a man to spend it on the 
work — somehow munney slipps through my fingers 
too fast to do any good — Til sure succeed. I want 
a man as can help me otherways too. I dunno why 
’tis. General, but there ain’t no man hereabouts that 
works fer wages that’s wuth a York shillin’ a 
month.” 

“ I know why it is,” said Washington. “ It is be- 
cause of slavery. God forgive us for it. A white 
man won’t work with slaves. He goes away or he 
slinks around idly. But the black curse will soon 
be wiped out. Slavery is bound to go and go 
quickly.” 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 85- 

Nearly all men thought so in those days. There 
was more abolition sentiment then in Virginia than 
there was in Massachusetts, where they turned many 
a disgraceful dollar — they called it a pretty penny 
— out of stealing men in Africa and selling them in 
America. It was Stephen Whitney of Connecticut 
whose invention of the cotton-gin in 1794, eighteen 
months after he had graduated from Yale, made 
slavery so profitable to the South that its roots sank 
too deep for anything but a bloody civil war to 
tear them up. 

Virginia was burdened, not only by slavery, but 
by lack of schools for the mass of her white popu- 
lation. So far as schools were concerned, the fa- 
mous saying of Sir William Berkeley, Royal Gov- 
ernor in 1671, still held good. Dull Sir William 
reported to his dull King: “ I thank God there are 
no free schools nor printing and I hope we shall not 
have them these hundred years. . . . God keep us 
from both ! ” 

“ Well,’' said Washington, when Tom had read 
the letter, “ I thought perhaps you might be the man 
Mr. Rumsey wants. If you care to go to Shepherds- 


86 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

town, ril manage to supply the money, enough to 
try out his plans and to take care of you, with 
something over to send your mother.” 

“ I thank Your Excellency a thousand times,” 
said Tom. “ I can never cease to be proud that you 
have so kindly thought of me. For myself, I would 
be glad to go, but I must have my mother’s consent. 
We have been long separated. She could not go 
to Virginia with me, for she could not bear to leave 
the house where Father died. I cannot go unless 
she says so. But go or not, I thank you from my 
heart. Have I Your Excellency’s permission to 
withdraw ? ” 

“ Your mother knows all about it. Captain 
Strong. I talked to her about it in Newburgh. 
There were a few tears, but she said she gave you to 
me in 1776 and she wouldn’t take back the gift 
now, if I still wanted you. And I do. Will you 
still serve me. Captain ? ” 

“ With all my heart, Your Excellency.” 

Tom Strong rose to his feet and saluted. George 
Washington held out his hand, saying: 

“We are on the verge of being no longer sol- 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 87 

diers, but civilians both. I wish you success in your 
new life.” 

Reverently and gently Tom pressed the extended 
hand, as he bowed low over it. 

“ If Zed could see me now, he’d be happy,” Tom 
thought. 


CHAPTER V 


J^OVEMBER 25th, 1783. King George the 
Third’s last day in New York. The British 
flag fluttered down from the flag-pole in Battery 
Park. Sir Guy Carleton sailed away with all his 
men. Citizens who had been good Tories yesterday 
were frantic lovers of freedom to-day. Twelve 
thousand steadfast Tories, men, women, and chil- 
dren, a melancholy throng, had sailed from New 
York two months before, when the last hope that 
“ rebellion ” had not spelled “ revolution ” had 
failed. Some went to Nova Scotia, some to the 
West Indies, all to sorrow. With fine spirit most 
of them, with coward fear some of them, they broke 
the ties of home for the sake of loyalty to “ the 
King, God bless him,” but the breaking hurt. 

Just about as the British flag was unfurled for 
the last time at Battery Park, 119 years after the 
Dutch flag had given place to the British and New 

Amsterdam had become New York, there was a 
88 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 89 

fanfare of trumpets in front of the Van Cortlandt 
house. Washington came down the steps, followed 
by his staff in all their sober bravery of blue and 
buff, albeit with ripples of lace at throat and wrists. 
Tom’s flesh rather resented this unaccustomed finery 
of lace. It tickled him. But he knew his came from 
his mother’s wedding-gown and he bore it proudly, 
as became a knight wearing such a favor from the 
lady of his love. Mistress Betsey Schuyler knew 
where Alexander Hamilton’s lace came from. More 
of the same sort was hidden away in a “ high-boy ” 
in her dressing-room. It was destined to be part 
of another wedding-gown, her own. 

The march began. The trumpeters came first. 
Then a guard of honor. Then Washington. Then 
his staff. Then a few cavalry. Then a band that 
had rattled its drums at Yorktown. Then a phalanx 
of infantry, veterans all, in blue coats, white waist- 
coats and breeches. 

Through the length of Manhattan Island, most 
of it a placid country-side with a few great country- 
seats dominating its gentle hills, the procession came. 
Liberty rode by Washington’s side. At the Battery, 


90 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

where all the little town had gathered, the troops 
presented arms; with blare of trumpet and beat of 
drum the Stars-and-Stripes with only thirteen stars 
flew to the November breeze; and the band made 
the echoes ring. There was a little delay, for the 
English had cut the halyards and greased the pole 
and left their own flag flying. A certain John van 
Arsdale stepped out of the Continental ranks. He 
nailed cleats on the pole, clambered up them, nailed 
on some more, clambered up again, and so on until 
he reached the top, cut down the scarlet flag, wove in 
new halyards, and sent “ Old Glory ” to the top of 
the pole. 

Washington bestrode his war-horse, stately, 
splendid, serene. All eyes were fastened upon him. 
All eyes but two. They were “ the widow Strong’s.” 
They were fixed with uttermost mother-love upon 
Washington’s youngest aide-de-camp. Captain Tom 
Strong of the First Continentals. 

Nine days later Washington bade farewell to his 
generals. They had gathered in the “ long room ” 
of Fraunces’ Tavern, which still stands at the south- 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 91 

east corner of Broad and Pearl Streets, in the great 
modern metropolis of New York, as it did then in 
little old New York. Then it belonged to “ Black 
Sam ” Fraunces, a famous cook. Now it belongs 



FRAUNCES’ TAVERN 
From an etching by Wm, Sartain 

to the Sons of the Revolution, who have restored it 
with loving care, and it is still a tavern. To the 
gathering of the generals came their chief. Some 
there were there who had hated him and hated him 
still. Some there were there who had plotted against 
him. But all of them, enemies and stanch friends 
alike, felt the majesty of his presence, the kingliness 


92 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

of his glance, the splendor of his spirit. They came 
forward, one by one, to take his hand, to say good- 
by. Memories of many a hard-fought field,, of vic- 
tory, of defeat, of privation, of indomitable per- 
severance, of almost superhuman strength, were in 
those handclasps. Tom, who was to go South with 
the Chief, watched the historic scene from the door- 
way. The generals formed in two lines. Washing- 
ton passed between them and descended to the 
street, where again all New York had gathered, as it 
had at the Battery nine days before. There was 
sober cheering from the saddened throng. Women 
wept. More than one veteran found his eyes grow 
dim. The great man entered a barge at the foot of 
Whitehall Street. Ten ship’s-captains pulled the 
oars. Tom, at the bow, looked back past his Gen- 
eral’s graven face to the shore. It was black with 
people, but of them all he saw only his mother, wav- 
ing with a tear-stained handkerchief a fond farewell 
to her boy. New York and Virginia were far fur- 
ther apart then than New York and Oregon are now. 
New York was about ten days away from Boston. 
Though the stage-coach that ran between the two 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 93 

cities started at 3 a.m. and stopped only at 10 p.m., 
it made but forty miles in those nineteen hours. 
Even that was remarkable, in view of the condition 
of the roads. If such was the case in a compara- 
tively thickly-settled community like New England, 
imagination fails to paint the badness of the high- 
ways south of Philadelphia. High postage made 
letters a luxury beyond the reach of the poor and 
the mails were irregular and uncertain. A journey 
was a serious undertaking then. There is not much 
exaggeration in Washington Irving’s story of the 
Dutch merchant leaving New York for Albany, who 
had prayers offered in the churches for his safe ar- 
rival. Tom had gone to a far country. His mother 
was right in thinking that and it made her sad. But 
the greatest of Americans had wanted her boy and 
taken him with him. That made her glad. 

The little party rode across New Jersey to Phila- 
delphia, where Washington rendered his accounts 
for the whole war to the treasurer of the Congress. 
He had always declined to receive any pay, and he 
had advanced for public purposes from his own 
purse $64,315, a great sum in those primitive days. 


94 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

The peripatetic Congress was then in session at 
Annapolis, Maryland. That was the next stop. 
The body that had commissioned him was now to 
receive back the powers it had bestowed. At noon 
of December 23d, 1783, a hush fell upon the crowded 
room. Washington entered. In a few manly and 
simple words he offered his resignation. The presi- 
dent of Congress was General Mifflin, who had made 
the dark days of Valley Forge still darker by con- 
spiring with General Gates to have the Commander- 
in-Chief removed from his position. It was now 
Mifilin’s duty to receive in time of utter victory the 
voluntary resignation of the great general whose 
resignation he had sought to force in time of dis- 
aster. He rose to the occasion when he said : “ You 
retire from the theater of action with the blessings 
of your fellow-citizens, but the glory of your vir- 
tues will not terminate with your military command. 
It will continue to animate remotest ages.” The 
greatest of our American mural painters, Mr. Ed- 
win H. Blashfield, has glorified the walls of the 
Baltimore Courthouse with a symbolic picture of the 
scene at Annapolis. 



Washington Resigning at Annapolis 

Reproduced by permission from the painting: by E. H, Blashfield. Photograph copyright. 1903, by J. W. Schaefer, 




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Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 95 

The next day, on Christmas Eve, 1783, Wash- 
ington was at last at Mount Vernon, the first time 
he had been there, save for one hurried visit, since 
he rode away, in 1775, to take command of the 
“ rebel ” troops that then beleaguered Boston-town. 

From Annapolis Tom had ridden straight towards 
Shepherdstown. In one of his saddle-bags he car- 
ried a purse of money, and in one of his pockets a 
letter to James Rumsey. Washington had given him 
both. The money was for the experiments. It was 
all in English sovereigns. The English sovereign 
had survived the English King on American soil. 
There was practically no American money. The 
Continental currency had ceased to circulate. There 
were a few silver coins struck by the different 
States and a mass of dirty bits of paper issued by 
the different States. The only certain thing about 
their value was that they would be worth less next 
week than they were this. A motley mass of for- 
eign coins was in use. There were fourpence-ha’- 
pennies, sixpences, pistareens, picayunes, pips, 
Johannes or joes, doubloons, moidores, pistoles, 
sovereigns, guineas, ducats, and chequins. Tobacco 


g6 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

was currency in Virginia. Prices were sometimes 
stated in salt-pork in Massachusetts. In the “ State 
of Franklin,” which tried to establish itself in part 
of what is now Tennessee, the first legislature en- 
acted, in 1784, a legal-tender law. A pound of 
sugar equaled one shilling; a raccoon or fox skin, 
one shilling and threepence; a gallon of rye whisky, 
two shillings and sixpence; a gallon of peach brandy 
or a yard of good linen, three shillings; and a clean 
beaver-skin, otter-, or deerskin six shillings. The 
legal-tender furs passed from hand to hand in little 
bales, so ingenious criminals counterfeited otter- 
skins by sewing tails upon raccoon-skins. Never- 
theless the Franklin currency lasted longer than the 
State that made it lawful. 

Shepherdstown was a small settlement on the 
banks of the Potomac, in Virginia. It has quite van- 
ished from the map now, though James Rumsey al- 
most immortalized it. He came near launching there 
the first practicable steamboat. Tom approached it 
on a rainy day. His horse could scarcely stagger 
through the mudholes in the barbaric roads. Many 
a Virginian was called by his admirers ‘‘ the noblest 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 97 

Roman of them all,” but the meanest Roman of 
them all would have been ashamed of the roads of 
Virginia. Twice Tom had had to wait for hours 
until a roaring stream became placid enough to 
swim his horse across it. The fords were dan- 
gerous and the bridges few. Tom and his horse 
were soaked with water and splashed with yellow 
mud from head to foot when he drew near a small 
settlement. It was not a cheerful spot on that day 
of wintry rain. It consisted of a store and two 
residences, all unpainted, all apparently kept from 
tumbling down only by a kind Providence, all ut- 
terly shabby. The largest and the shabbiest was 
nearest. Tom drew rein there. It was a two-story 
house, with a wide porch running across its whole 
front. It sagged towards the ground. There were 
no gutters and it shed rain from every inch of its 
crazy roof. A few of the windows had small 
panes of glass. Others had greased paper, the back- 
woods substitute for glass. Others had rags stuffed 
into the broken frames. A tall man in shiny small- 
clothes that had once been fine and in a coat so 
worn and patched that its original color could only 


98 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

be guessed at, was sitting on a tumbledown chair on 
the porch, his rusty cowskin boots resting on the 
tottering balustrade, a cue tied with a faded rib- 
bon showing under his coonskin cap, a corncob pipe 
between his teeth. He rose slowly as Tom stopped. 
When he took his feet from the crazy railing, part 
of it fell. 

Will you kindly tell me where I can find ” 

'' Howdy, stranger, howdy ? ” said the tall man, 
heartily. “ Don’t stay out there in the rain askin’ 
questions! Come in, stranger. I sure am glad to 
see you. Howdy? Ephraim’ll take your horse. 
Ephraim! Now, where is that fool darky? 
Ephraim ! ” 

“ Cornin’, massa.” 

An old negro, a study in rags, came bowing and 
smiling around the corner of the house. 

Here I be, massa. I’ll take the gemman’s boss. 
Light down, Cunnle, won’t ye? ” 

He took the reins as they fell from Tom’s cold 
fingers, helped him as he stiffly dismounted, and 
possessed himself of the saddlebags. And all the 
time he grinned delightedly, as if this were the 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 99 

finest day, and the stranger’s arrival the greatest 
event, and himself the happiest person in the whole 
wide world. Ephraim shed happiness about him as 
the sun sheds light and heat. Somehow Tom felt 
his weary heart grow lighter. 

By this time, his host was shaking him warmly 
by the hand, upon the porch, repeating again and 
again : “ Colonel, you sure are welcome to Liberty 
Hall.” 

“ You are most kind, sir. I want to find ” 

“ We’ll find him for you, we’ll find him. Come 
right in. We’ll have a blazin’ fire in a minute. 
Ephraim ! ” 

“ Yes, massa.” 

“ You leave that horse stand a bit and make up a 
big fire.” 

“ I’ll have to chop kindlin’, massa. There ain’t 
none.” 

‘‘ Nonsense. We can’t wait for that. The gen- 
tleman’s cold. Here, pick up those pieces.” He 
pointed to the fallen rail. “ They’ll make good 
kindlin’. And, Ephraim, I’ve told you every day for 
a year that railin’ was bound to fall. If you don’t 


loo Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

fix it to-morrow, I’ll skin you alive, Ephraim, d’ye 
hear ? ” He smiled a cherubic smile at the old 
negro, who had heard that threat too many times 
to dread it. 

The fire was made in the great fireplace of a wide 
hall that ran through the house and was evidently a 
general living-room. With some difficulty an un- 
broken chair was found for the welcome guest. 
When his outer garments had been hung up to dry, 
when hot coffee had been supplied, and when old 
Ephraim had toddled off to care for the horse, his 
host let Tom talk. 

You said, sah, you wanted to find ” 

A place called Shepherdstown and a gentleman 
named James Rumsey.” 

‘‘ Well, this is luck, stranger. This is Shep- 
herdstown and I’m James Rumsey. You’ll stay 
with me a while, won’t you? If it’s business that 
brings you, wait till you’re rested up. A few days’ll 
make you right as a trivet. Travelin’ in old Vir- 
ginia is tol’able hard work, that’s what it is.” 

“ I have a letter for you, Mr. Rumsey.” 

“ Well, now, that’s a surprise. Letters are 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain loi 

scarcer’!! hens’ teeth in Shepherdstown. It was 
kind o’ you to bring it, Colonel ” 

I’m only a captain, Mr. Rumsey, and not that, 
now. I’m Tom Strong.” 

Oh, since the wah, sah, we are all brevet 
colonels in Virginia. I saw little fighting myself. 
Colonel Strong, — just toted about a gun a bit and 
fired when I saw somethin’ red. The only real 
battle I was ever in was the Cowpens.” 

“ The Cowpens ? I was there, too.” 

‘‘ Then we’ve fought and bled together. What 
were you with ? ” 

The cavalry. And you, Mr. Rumsey? ” 

“ I was a high-private in the infantry, the militia. 
I guess we’d have all run if it hadn’t been for a long 
Yankee named Zed Pratt.” 

He’s my dearest friend.” 

Shake again, Colonel Strong. We made him 
a captain on the field. Were you a captain 
then?” 

“ No, my captaincy came at Yorktown.” 

‘‘ You don’t say. Why, then you’ve seen General 
Washington.” 


102 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

‘‘ Fve served on his staff. This letter is from 
him.” 

Tom held out the letter. Rumsey took it and 
read it. Then he read it again. Then he said : 

There never was such a man as the General. 
I just know I can make a steamboat. All my 
friends allow Fm plumb crazy. They’ve dropped 
away from me. All the men Fve borrowed money 
from to build the boat act like they thought Fd 
robbed ’em. All but one. That’s Washington. 
Here he says he’s sent you to help me and he’s given 
you money to carry on the work. Well, Colonel, 
we’ll turn the trick. Do you know much about 
mechanics ? ” 

“ Very little, but Fm a handy man with any kind 
of tool.” 

“ Supper’s ready, massa,” Ephraim announced. 

There were chickens and cornpone and potatoes 
on the table. Presently there was nothing. Tom’s 
mighty appetite, well seconded by Rumsey’s, swept 
the board. Ephraim chuckled to see them eat. 
Then, having already been hostler, handy-man, cook, 
and butler, he turned hostler again and went out to 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 103 

see that the guest’s horse was treated as a guest 
too. 

After supper, Rumsey produced some rough 
drawings of his invention, over which both men 
pored long. Rumsey had never seen a steam-engine. 
Few men had at that time. But he had read of 
steam-engines, and he had finally made one. He 
explained that his theory was to suck in water at 
the bow and expel it at the stern and thus make his 
boat move forward. The idea, probably original 
with Rumsey, has been tried again and again, even 
in quite recent times, but it has never been a suc- 
cess. It was of course long before the time of the 
screw propeller, but John Fitch, in Philadelphia, al- 
ready had paddle-wheels in his head. So he was to 
that extent ahead of Rumsey. A side-wheel steam- 
ship, the Savannah,” made the first transatlantic 
voyage, from Savannah to London, in 1819. When 
she ran into a storm, she lifted her paddle-wheels 
out of the water and relied upon her sails. Side- 
wheelers were the only transatlantic liners down to a 
date within the memory of many. When the draw- 
ings had been well studied, Rumsey bellowed: 


104 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Ephraim ! ” The old negro appeared with his 
perennial smile. 

‘‘ Ephraim, light Colonel Strong to bed.” 

A pewter candlestick and a tallow-dip were pro- 
duced. 

‘‘ What do you mean, you old scoundrel, giv- 
ing the Colonel a tallow-dip ? Bring a wax- 
candle and be quick about it, or I’ll skin you 
alive.” 

Massa, you dun gib all our wax-candles for that 
last lot o’ wire, sah.” 

“ So I did, Ephraim, so I did. The fact is. 
Colonel,” he turned to Tom, “ money has been pow’- 
fill sca’ce with me lately and when the boat needed 
somethin’, I just bo’t it with whatever was handy. 
Yes, I traded the wax-candles for wire. Ephraim’s 
right. Blame you, you old darky, you gen’ally are 
right. Well, Colonel, you won’t mind a tallow-dip 
just now. We’ll go to bed with a hundred wax- 
candles apiece, if we want to, when the ‘ Liberty ’ 
once gets goin’.” 

“ So the boat’s named ‘ Liberty,’ is she ? I like 
that. And, Mr. Rumsey,” — the man and boy had 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 105 

taken to each other from the first moment — “ won’t 
you remember I’m named ‘ Tom ’ ? ” 

‘‘ Yes, I will, my boy. Good-night, Tom.” 

“ Dis way, Cunnle Tom,” chuckled Ephraim. 
He lighted the way upstairs to a vast room, where 
Tom slept the sleep of a healthy, tired boy. 

He was up bright and early the next morning, 
eager to work, proud to think that Washington had 
chosen him for this task and had shown him how 
success in it would help in the upbuilding of the 
new nation Washington had made. He found, 
rather to his horror, that Mr. Rumsey’s breakfast 
hour was nine o’clock. Ephraim explained that his 
master worked so hard he had to sleep late. So 
Tom went down to the river to look at the Lib- 
erty.” She lay on the shore, a flat-boat, about forty 
feet long, with a rude steam-pump mounted amid- 
ships. Tubes ran forward to suck in the water, and 
back to expel it. They were old stove-pipes. Every- 
thing about the machinery was old. It was a col- 
lection of odds and ends, wonderfully and fear- 
fully fastened together with wire and with rope. 
Yet as a beginning it looked hopeful. Tom had not 


io6 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

handled axe and saw, hammer and chisel, knife and 
adze in vain. He was a self-taught mechanic, but 
a good one. He saw possibilities in what the neigh- 
borhood called “ Rumsey’s Folly.” He was still 
studying the rattletrap device when he heard Ephra- 
im’s smiling call : 

“ Breakfus’ dun ready, Cunnle Tom.” 

Rumsey’s good-morning greeting was as warm 
and as welcome as the breakfast. Later they went 
down to the boat together. Tom asked many ques- 
tions and Rumsey could answer some of them. 
Then they fell heartily to work. At least Tom did. 
Rumsey’s idea of toil was of the Virginian variety. 
It was a good deal like the New York idea of sit- 
ting still. However, under the boy’s vigorous hands, 
the work went on. The “ Liberty ” shook from 
stem to stern as he pounded and hammered and 
tinkered and thumped. 

It took a long time, but at last the machinery was 
as much in order as its queerly-assorted materials 
permitted. On a beautiful January day in 1785, the 
whole countryside came to see “ Rumsey ’s Folly ” 
launched. There must have been a hundred people 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 107 

there, men, women, and children, white and black. 
The one store of Shepherdstown did a thriving 
business that day. They all whooped and yelled 
together as the flatboat was pushed on rollers to 
the river’s edge and then into the water. At least 
she floated, albeit some of her seams had to be 
hastily stuffed with anything that came handy, from 
Ephraim’s last towel to Tom’s best handkerchief. 
She was moored a few feet from shore. Then came 
the getting-up steam, a tedious process. At last, 
however, all was ready. Rumsey, pale with sus- 
pense, put the rude machinery in motion. 

“ Hi ! yi ! The dum thing’s movin’,” shouted a 
sympathizer. 

“ Thet’s the current, ye goose,” said a doubter; 
thar ain’t no steam a-movin’ her.” 

‘‘ ’Tis too. She’s goin a heap quicker’n the cur- 
rent. The Jeems River never got along that- 
away.” 

She was moving more quickly than the current, 
perhaps a mile an hour quicker. The crazy pump 
wobbled about and threatened to break to pieces at 
every stroke. The stove-pipe tubes spouted water 


io8 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

at every joint. With every chance against her, 
Rumsey’s “ Liberty ” did move over the surface 
of the James River faster than the current could 
carry her. Nay, after going downstream half a 
mile, she was turned about, and with Tom stoking 
her like mad, she actually made some three hundred 
yards upstream before half a dozen things broke at 
once. She was poled back to her starting-place, and 
met by an enthusiastic throng. Nobody spoke of 
Rumsey’s Folly ” now. It was generally admitted 
that Colonel Rumsey was a great man, sah,” 
“ the greatest inventor of this or any other age, 
sah.” It was even suggested that he should be sent 
to the Virginia legislature, which was Shepherds- 
town’s utmost dream of human glory. Rumsey 
himself sat amid the ruins of his machinery, the 
happiest man in the world, except Ephraim. Tom 
was happy, too. He thought that with a change 
here and a change there, with a real pump and real 
tubes, the “ Liberty ” might become a real steam- 
boat. He saw himself rushing down the Ohio in a 
craft like her, scaring Indians to death and white 
men into the woods, the flag of America over him. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 109 

perhaps even the Mississippi before him. It was a 
great day for Tom, too. 

Unfortunately no other great days followed for 
the “ Liberty.” With Washington’s further help in 
money and help in advice, for the great man rode 
across the country to see Rumsey and Tom and the 

Liberty ” more than once, a good pump was got- 
ten and tubes which were less like sieves were ob- 
tained. But with everything possible done for her, 
she never equaled the record of her trial trip. A 
whole year more of struggle came to naught. Rum- 
sey had to do the hardest thing in the world for a 
man to do. He had to give up the dream of years, 
turn his back upon it, turn to other work in no way 
connected with it. There was gloom in the shabby 
and sagging old house. Even Ephraim looked 
as sad as he could, — which was not sad at 
all. 

“ Tom, I spent all I had a good while ago, and 
now IVe spent all General Washington gave me and 
other men lent me. You’ve made no money out of 
bein’ partner in ' Rumsey’s Folly ’ ” — his voice 
broke here and his fine chin twitched — but if you 


no Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

want to go partners on Rumsey’s plantation, per- 
haps you will make some. I’ve a thousand acres 
of as good bottom-land as there is anywhere on the 
James. There ain’t any nigger ’cept Ephraim, but 
we could hire some and make a good crop every 
year. What d’ye say, Tom?” 

“ It’s a splendid offer, Mr. Rumsey, and I wish 
I could say yes, but I can’t. Mother wouldn’t 
know what to do without me. I must go home, now 
I can’t help you with the boat any more. Don’t 
call it ' Rumsey’s Folly ’ again, please. The last 
time General Washington was here, Sandy Botetourt 
called it that before him. Do you know what the 
General said?” 

“ No, Tom. What was it? ” 

He looked at Sandy and he looked to be about 
eight feet high. You know what I mean, Mr. Runi- 
sey.” Rumsey nodded; anybody who had ever seen 
Washington deeply moved knew exactly how a 
great man eight feet high looked. “ He said, quite 
low, but sort of as if he were Moses laying down the 
law : ‘ Don’t call it “ Rumsey’s Folly,” Mr. Botetourt. 
Succeed or fail, it is ‘‘ Rumsey’s Glory.” ’ You 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain in 

ought to have seen Sandy shrink. He wasn’t as 
high as the General’s shoe.” , 

Rumsey almost jumped to his feet. Tom had 
never seen him move so quickly. His gloom van- 
ished. He looked own brother to Ephraim, so far 
as cheerfulness was concerned. 

“ ‘ Rumsey’s Glory ’ ? The General really said 
that. Well, I’m paid for everything. ‘ Rumsey’s 
Glory.’ Tom, just think of having the greatest 
man in the world say that. Ephraim ! Come here, 
you fool nigger, and hear what Colonel Tom heard 
General Washington say.” 

Master and man rejoiced together over “ Rum- 
sey’s Glory.” 

The master wrote Washington that night : “ I 
have quite convinced myself that boats may be made 
to go against the current of the Mississippi or 
Ohio . . . from 6o to lOO miles a day.” 

Now Rumsey was speaking to the boy-captain: 

“ Tom, you said your mother wanted you home 
with her. Well, now, Tom you’ve told me a lot 
about your mother. Every day we’ve been together, 
you’ve talked about her. I feel as if I knew the lady 


1 12 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

right well. And a lady that’s brought up a son like 
you is the kind of lady I like and the kind I could 
love at sight. Now, Tom, honest, if I should spruce 
up and go to New York and offer your mother my 
heart and hand — it’s a good heart and a clean hand, 
my boy — and — and — the thousand acres of bottom- 
land, don’t you think she might marry me and come 
here and make it home for both of us? ” 

Any woman ought to be proud to get that heart 
and hand,” Tom gently answered ; “ but Mother’ll 
never marry again. She lives for Father to-day just 
as much as she does for me, — and that’s all the time. 
She’d like you. Colonel, down to the ground, but 
she wouldn’t marry you.” 

There’s another dream gone then. I’d hoped 
you’d say different. Well, Tom, if I can’t be your 
partner and can’t be your father, there’s one thing 
I can be, and that’s your friend, forever. And here’s 
my hand on it.” 

So Tom had made another lifelong friend. It 
was an excellent habit of his. He made friends, not 
because he was lucky, but because he was a com- 
pound of sunshine and strength. Make yourself 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 113 

into such a boy and you will never lack for 
friends. 

Rumsey’s friendship lasted to the end of that 
good man’s life and beyond, for when the end came, 
Tom found himself the heir of all Rumsey had, the 
thousand acres of bottom-land, which he sold at a 
good price, and old Ephraim, whom he indignantly 
refused to sell at any price. Instead he took him 
back to New York with him, where Ephraim lived, 
with another colored man named Jim, to an in- 
credible age, worshiping his “ Cunnle Tom ” and 
adoring a certain Tom Strong, junior, who had ar- 
rived in New York before Ephraim did, and whom 
Captain Tom Strong and his wife. Mistress Betsey 
Strong, thought quite the finest boy in the world. 
But that is another story. Perhaps I shall some 
day tell it. 

While Rumsey was experimenting with his suc- 
tion steamboat, other men were experimenting on 
other types. Every great invention is made by dif- 
ferent men at about the same time. It is “ in the 
air ” and more than one strong hand clutches it and 
brings it down to earth, for man’s betterment. It 


1 14 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

was by only a scant majority that the United States 
Supreme Court decided that the Bell telephone was 
not Daniel Drawbaugh’s telephone. So in steam- 
boats. Jouffroi steamed down the Saone in France, 
and John Fitch up the Delaware in Philadelphia, 
soon after Rumsey pumped his boat up the James. 
Before 1790 a steamboat company was organized 
in Philadelphia with a capital of $800, to run a 
Fitch boat between that city and Trenton. Fitch 
had a toy-boat running about 1785. He asked Con- 
gress for aid, which was refused. Then he asked 
Gardoqui, the Spanish Minister to this country. 
Gardoqui offered him on behalf of the Spanish 
King all the money he needed if he would give the 
King a monopoly of the invention. Fitch, poor, in 
debt, harassed, refused to do this, saying, with a 
fine patriotism: If there be any glory and profit 
in the invention, my countrymen shall have the whole 
of it.” Before 1800, Samuel Morey had gone up 
the Connecticut River by steam, and Elijah Ormsbee 
had navigated by steam the Seekonk River in Rhode 
Island, between Providence and Pawtucket. Soon 
afterwards one of the New Jersey Stevenses put 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 115 

a steam-engine, made by Boulton & Watt, of Man- 
chester, on a boat on the Hudson, and Oliver Evans 
went to and fro by steam on the Schuylkill and the 
Delaware. Finally, in 1807, the era of steam- 
navigation really began when the “ Clermont ” took 
Fulton from New York to Albany, while scared 
farmers fled from the river, shouting : “ A devil is 
walking on the water.” Honor to them all, but 
none the less honor to forgotten James Rumsey of 
vanished Shepherdstown. He dreamed the dream 
men more fortunate, but not greater, put into prac- 
tical effect. 

Rumsey was about to say good-by to Tom, when 
a spruce young negro, in the Washington livery, 
galloped up to the house, dismounted, bowed pro- 
foundly, and said : 

“ Good-evenin’, gemmen. A letter for Captain 
Strong, sah, from General Washington, sah.” 

Here is the letter. Imagine its now yellowed page 
(it is still an heirloom in the Strong family) folded 
envelopewise, for this was before envelopes were in 
common use, sealed with wax with the Washington 


ii6 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

coat-of-arms (which probably suggested the design 
of our flag), and addressed: 

“ These 

To Captain Thomas Strong, 

At Mr. James Rumsey’s House, 
Shepherdstown.” 


Within it said : 

Captain Thomas Strong, 
Shepherdstown. 

Sir: 

If you will have the kindness to come to 
Mt. Vernon, at such early time as may befit 
your convenience, you will confer a favor 
upon, sir. 

Your obedient humble servant, 

G. Washington.” 

That night, guided by the young negro, Tom 
Strong, saddlebags packed and heart aglow with the 
joy of having been summoned by his ‘‘ obedient 
humble servant, G. Washington,” galloped away. 

Rumsey watched his departure sadly and for once 
in his life even Ephraim forgot to smile. Both of 
them loved Tom. 


CHAPTER VI 


OUNT VERNON is a long house of two 
rather low stories and a gabled attic. A 
piazza with columns two-stories high runs across the 



MOUNT VERNON 

front. It was used as an outdoor sitting-room. 
Washington’s accounts show that he bought thirty 
Winsor chairs ” for it. Behind are several small 
buildings, storehouses, servants’ quarters, etc. In 


u8 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

front is the broad Potomac. The house stands upon 
a gentle hill. It was built by Lawrence Washington, 
half-brother of George, to whom Lawrence left it 
by his will, as he did the many broad acres in which 
the stately manor-house is set. There is a story 
that George, who was an athlete, once threw a dol- 
lar across the Potomac here. The feat is impos- 
sible, but when a diplomat said so in 1878 to Wil- 
liam M. Evarts, then Secretary of State, Mr. Evarts 
dryly replied : “ A dollar went farther in those days 
than it does now.’’ Perhaps the first wave of the 
great flood of women’s work outside the home that 
is doing so many things for our country to-day was 
when a voluntary association of women bought 
Mount Vernon just before the Civil War of 1861- 
1865 and dedicated it to public use forever. The 
house and grounds are kept in perfect condition. 
The old furniture has been bought back from sun- 
dry owners and put in its old places, as far as pos- 
sible. The home-makers of America have saved for 
us all the home of the greatest American. It gets its 
name from stout old Admiral Vernon of the British 
navy. Lawrence Washington served under him at 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 119 

the siege of Cartagena, in South America, was 
soundly thrashed with him, and had much admira- 
tion for him. Thereupon Lawrence, loyal British 
subject that he was, gave the Admiral’s honored 
name to his own new seat. In the year before Tom 



WASHINGTON’S TOMB 


first saw it, that is, in 1784, George Washington, 
Lawrence’s heir, had as his chief guest there the 
French Marquis de la Fayette — we call him Lafa- 
yette — who had fought under George of America 
against that English George to whom Lawrence was 
so loyal. 

As you stand on the piazza of Mount Vernon, 


120 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

looking down to the placid Potomac, you will see 
a winding path to your right. Follow it and you 
find yourself upon holy ground, upon the threshold 
of George Washington’s tomb, a small temple built 
into the green hillside. 

During the war between the States, Federal and 
Confederate armies passed and repassed near Mount 
Vernon. The countryside was laid waste. But no 
sacrilegious hand ever touched the tomb or home of 
Washington. 

When Tom rode up to the piazza, the natty groom 
behind him, a fine young fellow of twenty-two 
greeted him. 

“ Welcome to Mount Vernon, Captain Strong. 
The General bade me represent him, for the mo- 
ment. He is busy at a conference with some friends 
within. I am George Augustine Washington, the 
General’s nephew. Let me escort you to your room. 
Simeon, take the Captain’s saddlebags.” 

One of the three negroes who had followed young 
Washington out on the piazza took the saddle- 
bags, and Tom was ushered with all the ceremony 
of those days into the house, up the balustraded 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 121 

stairway, and into a luxurious room overlooking 
the river. 

“ Mrs. Washington bade me say she would be 
pleased to receive you, when you are ready to de- 
scend. . I will have the honor of awaiting you at 
the foot of the stair. I hope you will find Mount 
Vernon to your liking, Captain Strong.” 

I would be hard to please, were it not so, Mr. 
Washington, especially after the welcome you have 
so kindly given me.” 

“ The General told us much of you at dinner yes- 
terday,” said his young host. Lady Washington 
is eager to see ' the boy-captain.’ That is what the 
General called you.” 

“ In Kentucky my name was shorter,” laughed 
Tom. Simon Kenton baptized me ‘ Boy-Cap ’ and 
the nickname stuck.” 

The General told us of your career there, too. 
Poor Crawford! The last time he was at Mount 
Vernon, he had this very room. I looked it up in 
our guest-book last night. But I must not delay 
you.’' 

He bowed and was gone. 


122 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

When Tom’s hasty toilet had been made, he 
found his friend at the foot of the stairway, and 
was ushered by him into the room at the left, where 
a woman, short in stature but in spirit fit mate for 
Washington, rose to receive him. She had been 
giving household orders to a bevy of colored maids 
who stood at one side of the desk where she sat. 
A notable housewife was Martha Washington. A 
bunch of storeroom-keys jingled at her girdle as she 
rose. She did not seem short to Tom, perhaps be- 
cause her hair, beginning now to be shot through 
with white, was piled a foot above her head. A 
woman’s coiffure then was as exaggerated as a 
woman’s hat is now. 

Mrs. Washington, I present to you Captain 
Strong.” 

Tom bowed profoundly and Mrs. Washington 
courtesied low, sweeping her long robe dexterously 
behind her and permitting a glimpse of silver- 
buckled shoes and silk-clad ankles. 

' Welcome, Captain Strong. The General has 
prepared us to welcome you. Until he can see you, 
his nephew and I will do what we can to make you 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 123 

feel at home. I would I might have welcomed your 
lady mother with you. The General has made me 
quite jealous with his praises of Mistress Strong.” 

Now, Martha Washington was rather ruthless in 
enforcing the rigid rules of social rank in that rigid 
day, as she showed three years later, in 1789, when 
she laid down the law for “ the presidential court ” 
in New York. Tom shrewdly suspected that ‘‘ Lady 
Washington’s ” welcome of Mistress Strong would 
have been less hearty than her welcome of Mistress 
Strong’s son, a Continental captain and a favorite 
of the husband she adored — and sometimes ruled. 
If the General had a commanding way with him, 
so, it must be confessed, had the General’s wife. 
But as Tom was quite ready to be her subject, he 
found favor in the eyes of the somewhat imperious 
dame. When his audience was over, he left a good 
impression behind him. 

'' Will you hunt with me to-morrow morning? ” 
asked young Washington, when they were again 
alone. “ There’s a rare good pack of dogs and 
foxes are easy to find in this country. Or would 
you rather shoot? ’Tis early for the fishing. Or 


124 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

would you like a ’possum-hunt? We can have a 
fine one to-night, in the moonlight.” 

I would like them all,” said Tom, but I don’t 
know whether I shall be here to-morrow. Until I 
have the General’s orders, I am at sea. He may 
send me away this afternoon.” 

“ Faith, we’ll try to find out at dinner what his 
plans are for you. But if my respected uncle does- 
n’t want to tell anything, he won’t. Nevertheless, 
I’ll ask him.” 

The General’s conference had been long and ap- 
parently weighty. The two men who came out of 
the room, before Tom was taken into it, had lines 
of care and doubt on their faces. The General, too, 
sat brooding when Tom entered, but he rose to his 
feet with a smile at the sight of the boy-captain. 

Your host is late in greeting his guest. Cap- 
tain, but I trust my wife and nephew have done 
what they could for you. Our country’s affairs 
claim my time even more than when I had the honor, 
to command her armies. We must to dinner now, 
but later I would have you rejoin me in this room. 
I have much to say to you.” 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 125 

The dinner was at the fashionable hour of 3 p.m. 
There were but seven at table, the host and hostess, 
Miss Harriot Washington, the General’s niece, his 
nephew, Tom, and the two gentlemen who had con- 
ferred with the General. Tom found out now that 
the two were Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. 
They seemed a bit at odds with each other, more 
so than was to be explained by the difference in their 
positions. Jefferson was of the gentry, Henry of 
the yeomanry, of Virginia. Class-distinctions were 
graven deep in Virginian life. The Revolution had 
thrown down some of the barriers, but by no means 
all. Mrs. Washington, who did much of the carv- 
ing, in the kindly fashion of the day, pressed re- 
peated helpings upon all her guests, but her manner 
marked the gulf that lay between Thomas Jefferson, 
Esq., and Mr. Patrick Henry. She showed little 
interest in Henry’s appetite, but she would have 
none of Jefferson’s denials. Eat much he should, 
and eat much he did, under his hostess’s imperious 
orders. Miss Harriot had smiled winningly upon 
Tom, when he was introduced to her. The artillery 
of her eyes was famous for the execution it did, but 


126 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

she spared Tom, perhaps as not being big enough 
game for a girl who was besieged by Virginia plant- 
ers. She made him feel, however, that she shared 
in the kindly welcome the family gave him. She 
would not have been a true daughter of the Old 
Dominion if she had not. Virginian hospitality 
in those closing years of the eighteenth century was 
a most perfect thing. 

Young Washington, true to his word, tried to 
find out whether Tom could share his amusements. 
Now the General was a thorough Virginian in his 
love of sport, but he gave no hope of Tom’s getting 
any. 

“ Captain Strong is on his way home, you 
know. You would not have him delay seeing his 
mother a day for the sake of a gallop after a 
fox.” 

“ Is it his mother the Captain is going to see? ” 
cried Miss Harriot, gayly. ‘‘ I vow I think some 
younger eyes are the Captain’s beacon. Will you 
not name your lady-love. Captain, and let us toast 

her ? Is it Madge ? or is it ” 

Fie, fie, Harriot,” interrupted the majestic Mar- 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 127 

tha. “ Young maids believe a young man thinks 
only of them.” 

Them ? Is the Captain contemplating big- 
amy ? ” . 

“ Mistress Harriot would make any man a monog- 
amist,” said Jefferson. 

“ And make every man enter the lists for the 
prize,” Henry added, with a rather awkward bow. 
Lady Washington and Miss Harriot did not look 
overpleased at the crude compliment. The niece of 
Washington was not for yeomen’s praise. 

We will not venture to detain Captain Strong 
beyond to-morrow morning. I shall ride with him 
a few miles. Let the horses be ready at eight, 
Jeremy.” 

The majestic butler behind Mrs. Washington’s 
chair bowed his powdered wig in acknowledgment 
of the command. 

“I may ride with you, may I not. General?” 
asked his nephew. 

‘‘ I’ll ride, too,” said his niece. 

Captain Strong and I will have much to say to 
each other,” the host replied. '' We must deny our- 


128 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

selves the pleasure of your company until he next 
visits Mount Vernon.” 

The dinner over, Jefferson and Henry departed, 
but not together, and then Tom followed Washing- 
ton into the library. 

“ The country is in a parlous state. Captain,” 
began his host. “We are less united than during 
the war. The Congress commands no respect and 
can raise no money. The nation can pay neither 
its debts nor its daily expenses. Europe jeers at 
us and expects us to sue to England to govern us 
again. There are rumors of insurrection. One 
Daniel Shays is said to be planning a revolt in 
Massachusetts. The Pennsylvania mountaineers say 
they will not pay the whisky tax that State is to 
impose. They threaten armed resistance. Some of 
our friends in Kentucky talk of a separate con- 
federacy beyond the Alleghanies. They say that 
if we do not make Spain open the lower Mississippi 
to their flatboats, they will do so themselves and do 
it on their own account. We are a nation without 
a head, without a treasury, without an army. Do 
you know the strength of our army? There are but 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 129 

587 infantry and 71 artillerymen — and that beg- 
garly handful haven’t received their beggarly pay 
for months. What we fought for and won in war, 
we are losing in peace. Do you not think that we 
must sink our petty provincial jealousies and create 
a strong central government?” 

“Would Your Excellency abolish State lines?” 
asked Tom. 

“ Now God forbid. Virginia must still be Vir- 
ginia, but she should also be part of a great nation, 
not of a dying league of discordant communities. 
The discords have gone far. Why, New York has 
levied a tariff on every boatload of Connecticut-cut 
wood and every canoeful of Jersey-grown cabbages. 
And the Jerseys, in revenge, are taxing New York 
$150 a month on the site of a lighthouse she has 
built on Jersey soil. The United States of America 
are the derision of mankind.” 

“ You told us once at your table in Newburgh the 
story of the blind King of Bohemia fighting at the 
battle of Crecy and of his motto which the English 
Prince of Wales now bears, ' Ich dien — I serve,’ ” 
said Tom. “ That is my motto whenever Your 


130 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Excellency honors me by letting me serve 
you.” 

I knew you would not fail me.” 

A long talk followed. Men were of different 
minds. In Virginia Thomas Jefferson believed as 
Washington did, but Patrick Henry did not. In 
New York Alexander Hamilton was heart and soul 
with his chief, but George Clinton, the idol of the 
people there, would rather have the loose tie between 
New York and the other States broken than 
strengthened, if he had thereby to give up any of 
the power which as Governor his strong hands had 
clutched and now held. What Benjamin Franklin 
thought in Pennsylvania, what Rufus King thought 
in Massachusetts, Washington did not know. He 
could not trust to letters to find out. The mails were 
uncertain and letters were sometimes opened by the 
wrong people if addressed to a prominent name. 
John Adams wrote to his wife, August 28th, 1774, 
from Princeton, two weeks after leaving Boston: 
‘‘ I have not found a single opportunity to write 
since I left Boston, excepting by the post, and I 
don’t choose to write by that conveyance, for fear 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 13 1 

of foul play.” Washington wished Tom to find out 
for him what Franklin and King thought it best 
to do. Tom jumped at the chance. 

Later that afternoon he was taken over part of the 
estate. It showed everywhere marks of the mas- 
ter’s mind. In a day when the planters about him 
were exhausting their land by forcing it to bear 
continuous crops of tobacco until it was impover- 
ished, and then continuous crops of corn until it 
was ruined, while they bought everything they and 
their slaves consumed, except part of the corn, 
Washington knew the importance of diversified 
crops and industries. He grew wheat, flax, hay, 
clover, buckwheat, potatoes. He made flour. 
Years before, flour marked “ George Washington, 
Mt. Vernon ” had been made free of inspection 
in West Indian ports. It was sure to be good. He 
sold herring and shad, the product of the Potomac, 
and cider and stronger drink, the product of his 
presses and stills. His looms turned out many yards 
of cloth, some of it strangely named, — birdseye- 
diaper, kirsey-wool, barragon, herring-box, and 
shalloon. His slaves made their own shoes. He 


132 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

dealt in cordwood. He had sheep and hogs and 
horses and jackasses — these last a gift from the 
King of Spain — and mules and cattle. It is true 
that with loi cows he sometimes had to buy butter 
for his own table. His two favorite dishes were 
salt codfish and honey, the latter from his own bee- 
hives. 

Mount Vernon was strangely empty the night 
Tom spent there. It was usually overrun with un- 
invited guests, not to be denied bed and board under 
the rules of Virginian hospitality. About this time 
Washington wrote to his mother: In truth it may 
be compared to a well-resorted tavern, as scarcely 
any strangers who are going from north to south 
or from the south to north do not spend a day or two 
at it.” In 1785, two years after he had become 
a private citizen, he entered in his diary : “ Dined 
with only Mrs. Washington, which I believe is the 
first instance of it since my retirement from public 
life.” 

There was a dish of tea ” in the evening, after 
which Mrs. Washington graciously presented Tom 
with a packet of “ Annatipic Pills,” which was one 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 133 

of her favorite quack medicines. Like every plant- 
er’s wife she dosed her friends and her slaves. 
Jalap and rhubarb were the mildest medicines. The 
strongest have long since vanished from doctors’ 
prescriptions. Washington himself, though he had 
his stepson vaccinated secretly, when Virginia law 
forbade vaccination, had his medical foibles. His 
diary shows that “ Joshua Evans put a [metal] ring 
on Patsey [his stepdaughter] for fits ” and that 
when Mrs. Washington was slightly indisposed he 
sent for Dr. Laurie to bleed her. The doctor, says 
the diary, “ came here, I may add, drunk,” so the 
bleeding had to be postponed until he was sober 
again. Bleeding was the great cure-all then. 
Washington himself probably died (in 1799) of 
being bled. He had an attack of ague. Three 
doctors bled him four times. The last time a quart 
of blood was taken from him. No wonder he 
died. 

The evening ended early. As the clock struck 
nine, Mrs. Washington rose and said, as she used to 
say in her crowded parlors in New York, when her 
husband had become President : The General al- 


134 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

ways retires at nine and I usually precede him.” 
Needless to say, Tom retired at nine. 

Behold him the next morning, after a seven- 
o’clock breakfast of ham, eggs, corncakes, honey, 
and coffee, — a breakfast attended by all the house- 
hold, — mounted on one of his host’s horses, a 
mounted groom behind him leading his own, and 
Washington mounted also on the same steed that 
had carried him from Newburgh to the Van Cort- 
landt house, and from there to New York eighteen 
months before, when he thought his task had ended 
with the raising of our flag at the Battery. He 
knew better now. His country still had sore need 
of him. 

Mrs. Washington and Miss Harriot gave Tom 
polite nothings of messages for his mother, and 
young Washington called out promises of foxes 
galore when next he came, as the Chief and he 
started. Through the morning they talked. At 
noon they lunched at a wayside inn, where Wash- 
ington gave him letters to Franklin and King, and 
also made him accept the splendid horse he had rid- 
den that morning. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 135 

“ There are plenty in my stables,” said the 
wealthy planter. “ This one will not be missed. 
His name is that of his famous sire. On my stable- 
book he is called Billy-boy.” 

There was another handclasp. It was the second 
Washington had given him. Then the General 
turned back, his groom following him, and Tom 
fared northward on his own horse, with Billy- 
boy trailing willingly on a guide-rope behind 
him. 

The night was passed, or rather was begun, at 
a hotel that was little more than a hut. Tom had 
reached it just as dusk came. The road forked 
there. The look of the place did not please him, 
and the people who came out at his call pleased 
him still less. They were a villainous-looking white 
man, with a smirking, cringing manner, and a negro 
of still worse aspect, sullen as well as servile. 

Light down, young gentleman, light down,” 
said the white man. The old inn don’t look hand- 
some, but the sign says truth.” It swung above 
their heads, weatherbeaten, creaking, Tom thought, 
the way a gallows would creak. It announced that 


136 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

the Eagle Inn had “ good accommodations for man 
and beast.’’ 

‘‘ We can take care of you and your bosses, can’t 
we, Sam ? ” 

Yes, massa, good care o’ bofe of um.” 

Tom saw an evil glance pass between master and 
man. He had a presentiment of something wrong. 
He decided not to stop. 

“ I called out only to get some directions. Which 
is the road to Annapolis?” 

“ Lord o’ mussy, stranger, you can’t get to An- 
napolis to-night. It’s ten miles and the road’s hard 
to find in the daytime. And the crick’s up. There’ll 
be no fording her till to-morrow. You can hear her 
boom from here.” 

There was indeed a sound of a swollen stream 
not far off. 

“ Where does the other road go to ? ” 

‘‘ Oh, it just nachally wanders ’round through the 
country. It leads to a village ’bout twelve miles off, 
but, say, they’re twelve long miles. Real country 
miles. You’d be beat out ’fore you reached Green- 
upsburg.” 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 137 

“ And there ain’t no place to put up at Greenups- 
burg, massa,” suggested the negro. 

Not a sign nor a smell of a place, young master. 
It’s plain to see you’re a stranger hereabouts, or 
you wouldn’t be thinkin’ of takin’ that road. We’ll 
fix you fine, won’t we, Sam ? ” 

“ Yes, massa, fix um fine.” The darky grinned 
again. His grins were no more like Ephraim’s 
wide-mouthed smiles than carbolic acid is like 
spring-water. Tom still hesitated. He had heard 
tales of strangers disappearing in lonely inns. He 
thoroughly disliked what he could see of the Eagle 
and he thoroughly distrusted the innkeeper and his 
sooty servant. However, there seemed nothing else 
to do, so he dismounted. As he did so, some guineas 
in his pocket chinked together. Again master and 
man eyed each other evilly. 

Take the young gentleman’s bosses, Sam,” the 
innkeeper directed. 

No, I’ll put them up myself,” said Tom. He 
thought he might as well know the way to the stable 
and make sure his animals were well fed. Sam 
went with him, helped unsaddle, and showed him 


138 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

where to find corn and hay. Then he slipped quietly 
away. When Tom came into the house, he found 
the two men whispering together. He caught the* 
words ‘‘ all three of the boys.” The whispering 
stopped suddenly upon his appearance. 

The supper was poor. The white man cooked 
and served it. The negro had disappeared. When 
Tom asked where he was to sleep, he was shown 
a ladder-like stair that led to a hall in the low attic, 
from which two doors opened. One of these ad- 
mitted him to his room. It was scantily furnished. 
There was no door-fastening except a wooden latch, 
with a chock-block above it, but with a hole nearby 
through which this could be reached from the out- 
side. 

“ Good-night,” said the innkeeper, setting down 
the candle he carried. “ Hope yoivll sleep well. If 
anybody drops in for a drink to-night. Til make 
’em keep still, so you won’t be disturbed. Gen’- 
ally folks do drop in. You may hear ’em talkin’. 
But nobody’ll bother you.” ^ 

He climbed downstairs. Tom made a noise as if 
undressing, but he took off nothing but his shoes. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 139 

Instead he hung his saddlebags over his shoulders, 
looked at the priming of his pistol, and tested with 
his thumb the keenness of the blade of his clasp- 
knife. It had a razor edge. Then he blew out his 
candle, lay down noisily on the bed, as a tired-out 
man might fling himself upon it, and got up at 
once with the Indian noiselessness he had learned 
from Zed. He crept to the gable-window of his 
attic and peered out. The moon was just rising. 
By its dim light he saw near the stable the negro 
and three slouching men. They went in long enough 
to look over the two horses, then came out and 
joined the innkeeper under Tom’s window. 

“ Good bosses. They’ll fetch a big price in Phila- 
delphy. But Sam says the man’s got gold on him. 
Sam heard it chink. We’re goin’ to have his money 
as well as his bosses. There’s room to bury him 
where we buried the others. And it’s safer. Dead 
men tell no tales. He’s best put away.” 

Thus the spokesman of the gang. 

“ All right,” answered the innkeeper. I’ll go 
upstairs and open the door. Let Jim slip in and 
knife him.” 


140 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

The men entered the house. Then the stairway 
creaked a bit as two men mounted it. Tom had 
gone to the door. Two fingers came groping in at 
the opening, seeking to move the latch. The razor- 
edged knife flashed in the moonlight. The ends of 
two fingers dropped into the room. There was a 
yell of pain outside the door, the sound of two men 
jumping down the stairway, a hasty shuffling of feet 
in the room below, a hurried whispering. Then a 
loud voice was heard. 

Give us your money and the bosses and we’ll 
let you go.” 

Tom made no answer. 

“ Honest, we will. If you’re ’fraid to speak, drop 
the money downstairs. We mean to get that, but 
we ain’t so keen on killin’ you.” 

Tom stayed silent. 

There was more whispering, then a sound of 
footsteps. Tom crept to the window. A man was 
crossing the stableyard to the stable. ^ 

“ Stop there,” shouted the boy; “ I’ll shoot the 
first man that touches the stable-door.” 

The man dodged back into the house. More 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 141 

whispering. A long wait. Then a fellow ran in 
zigzags towards the stable.^ Tom fired. That in- 
stant the door to his room Was burst open and two 
white men and Sam rushed at him. The man below 
had been a decoy, to draw his fire. There was no 
time to reload his pistol. He flung it with steady 
aim at the head of the foremost of the gang, and 
the fellow dropped, stunned and bleeding. But as 
he raised his knife for a last desperate struggle, 
Sam’s cudgel knocked it out of his hand. The 
negro and the remaining outlaw sprang upon him 
and bore him to the floor. He was instantly roped 
into a helpless bundle. He wondered why he was 
not instantly killed. It was because the gang had 
decided to take him part way with them, in order 
that there might be no tell-tale blood-stains at the 
Eagle Inn and no possible discovery of a fresh- 
made grave there. First, however, he was taken 
downstairs, where the innkeeper, whose right hand 
was wrapped in a bloody cloth, cursed him hor- 
ribly. His pockets and his saddle-bags were 
searched. Their contents were spread upon the 
table. The money was speedily divided into five 


142 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

portions. Tom noted that the innkeeper received 
two of the five and that he tossed one of the stolen 
guineas to Sam. The letters to Franklin and King 
gave rise to angry debate. The coats-of-arms upon 
their waxen seals showed they were Washington’s. 
Their bearer, boy though he was, must be a person 
of some consequence, for the sake of the letters if 
not on his own account. Instead of being, as they 
had thought, a casual stranger who might safely 
be done away with, it was now evident that his 
disappearance would cause remark, inquiry, search. 
Should he be killed and the letters burned ? Should 
he be killed and the letters forwarded by another 
hand? Should he be ransomed and allowed to 
carry the letters himself? They debated quite 
calmly before Tom the question of the advisability 
of murdering him. The innkeeper was hot for the 
death of the man who had maimed him for life. 
Sam sided with his master. The other three were 
not so sure. The one who had been stumjed was 
nursing a broken head. The one who had been 
shot had his arm in a sling. They hated the plucky ' 
boy, but they feared revenge would be too costly. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 143 

Finally a proposition was made. Tom was to be 
turned loose, without money or horses, but with 
the letters. He was to take a blood-curdling oath 
never to inform upon them. If not, — the innkeep- 
er’s wolfish eyes told him what would happen then. 
The boy hesitated. He was ready to lose his life, 
as he had often risked it during the Revolution, for 
his duty, but which way did duty lie ? He hated to 
make a bargain with the scoundrels who had him 
at their mercy, but he had his mother to think of 
and the trust Washington had laid upon him to 
fulfil. Finally he said : “ Give me an hour to de- 
cide.” 

You can have just one minute,” said the inn- 
keeper, a knife already in his left hand. "" I would- 
n’t give you that.” 

“ Shut up, you fool.” It was the leader of the 
gang who spoke. “ It’ll take us an hour to get 
ready to start. We must eat first. You go to 
cookin’.” 

Suppose somebody comes.” 

“ Nobody’ll come at this hour. ’Twon’t be sun- 
up for a good while yet.” 


144 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

The knife was sheathed with a grumble. The 
grumbler and Sam began to make a fire in the big 
brick oven. Tom was gagged and thrust into a 
closet. He heard the gang-leader say : “ Til bring 
round the bosses. You two fellows can nurse your 
head and your arm.” 

Tom never knew whether he would have agreed 
or not to their proposal. He did not need to de- 
cide, for unexpected help came ere the hour had 
gone. As his horses were brought to the door 
other horses galloped up there. A gruff voice said : 
“ You Bill Twigg, what you doin’ with them 
bosses ? ” 

'' Bringin’ ’em up, sah, for a gentleman that’s in- 
side.” 

“ I’ll see that gentleman before I take you to 
jail. I’ve a warrant here for you and your brothers 
for stealin’ some other bosses. Where be those 
brothers o’ yourn? Your wife said as how you’d all 
come to the Eagle. I bet ’twas for no good. You 
stand still. Jim, you shoot him if he tries to run. 
The rest of you come in with me.” 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 145 

It was the sheriff of the county. He and three 
deputies entered the house. No one was in sight. 
The innkeeper, Sam, and the two wounded outlaws 
had fled out of the backdoor before Bill Twigg had 
answered the first question put to him. There was 
no man to be seen, but there was one to be heard. 
Tom, unable to use tongue or arms or legs, was but- 
ting his head vigorously against the closet-door. 
The sheriff was a big man, but he jumped like a 
deer to the closet. Tom was dragged out. His 
bonds were cut. There were a few eager questions 
and the deputies scattered in pursuit of the fugitives. 
In ten minutes. Bill Twigg, fastened with the same 
ropes that had bound Tom, was put into the same 
closet, and the sheriff, Jim, and Tom were eating 
the food Sam and his master had prepared for the 
others. Tom made but a pretense of eating. The 
experiences of the night had not given him an appe- 
tite. His story was confirmed by Washington’s let- 
ters, still lying on the table, and by the guineas a 
search rescued from Twigg’s pocket. Four-fifths 
of his money had gone, but with the balance, with 
the letters, with his full saddle-bags, and on Billy- 


146 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

boy, his own horse following, he left the Eagle Inn 
soon after the sun rose. It was a beautiful morning. 
In the bright sunshine, the gloomy drama of the 
night before seemed but a nightmare. It was fine to 
be free. Tom whistled merrily as he rode. 


CHAPTER VII 


^“J^WO days afterwards, Billy-boy stopped with 
his* rider before a modest hotel in Philadel- 
phia. It was the Blue Cow. A signboard bore a 
picture of that unusual animal. Friend Jonathan 
Brown, the drab-coated Quaker who owned the 
hotel, bowed with dignity as Tom came up the 
piazza-steps, after his horses had been led back by 
an old negro of miraculous fatness. 

“ Has thee come to stay, friend ? ” the proprietor 
asked. 

“ For a day or two, at any rate. Is there a room 
for me? ” 

Thee shall be well lodged. Martha ! ” His 
daughter, a demure, gray-eyed dove of a girl, ap- 
peared. “ Thee will take friend ” 

“ I am Captain Tom Strong.” 

Thee will take friend Thomas — we like not war- 
like names in the Blue Cow — to the white chamber.” 

It was white indeed, that room. Save at his own 


147 


148 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

home and at Mount Vernon, Tom thought he had 
never seen such spotless cleanliness. Wainscoting, 
curtains, and bedspread were dazzlingly white. So 
were the chair-cushions and the table-cover. The 
floor, scrubbed till it shone, was strewn with white 
sand. A black Bible and an old engraving of Moses 
coming down from Sinai with the commandments, 
were the only adornments, unless we count as such 
the brilliantly polished brass andirons on the hearth 
and the great bunch of dried lavender that shed 
perfume through the room from the gleaming white 
mantel-shelf. 

Is there anything thee wishes, friend Thomas? ” 
“ Yes, Miss Martha.” 

“ Nay, we use not such forms here. Thee may 
say friend, an’ thee will.” 

I am delighted to find such a friend.” There 
was a little glint in the gray ey^s at this announce- 
ment. Tom’s tone had perhaps more than friend- 
ship in it. “ Now, I want to find your great man, 
Benjamin Franklin.” 

Thee can find him at Independence Hall. Ben- 
jamin sitteth there every day to do justice.” 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 149 

Tom walked down to Independence Hall. It was 
easy to find one’s way about the checkerboard streets 
of the Quaker town. They were pleasant streets, 
shaded by trees, clean with a cleanliness that Dutch 
traditions had not secured in New York. Red brick 
houses, with white stone steps and doorways, stood 
in regimental order side by side. There were many 
churches. The largest of them were the “ meeting- 
houses ” of the Friends. The passers-by strolled 
along the brick sidewalks. Nobody scurried. No- 
body was in a hurry. All was placid calm. As 
Tom walked, he saw the house whence he and Zed 
had hoped to kidnap General Howe. With quicken- 
ing pulses he passed the Shippen mansion, where the 
trapper and he had been trapped by a springlock; 
had played at being ghosts to scare the burly Cun- 
ningham; and had been rescued by the ready wit of 
Mistress Peggy Shippen. 

The President of Pennsylvania had little power 
and no pomp. Tom went past unguarded doors up 
unpoliced stairways to the unwatched “ President’s 
Chamber ” on the second floor. The door was ajar. 
Within, at a flat desk, sat a man in his eightieth 


1^0 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

year, with a long, good-humored face, a firm mouth, 
large nose, twinkling eyes under beetling eyebrows, 
and white hair falling upon his shoulders. He wore 
a well-cut suit of brown cloth, flowing coat, long 
waistcoat and knee-breeches, silk stockings, and 
silver-buckled shoes. Benjamin Franklin was not 
too much of a philosopher to escape vanity. Al- 
ways affecting humility that he might be exalted, he 
was as well aware of his personal importance as of 
his personal appearance. He had Biblical author- 
ity for delighting in the legs of a man,” even if 
those legs happened to be his own. He was looking 
at their silk-clad curves when' Tom entered. Also he 
was listening to a portly person who seemed to be 
laying down the law to him. As that was Frank- 
lin’s own role, he was probably bored, but he did not 
show it. On the contrary, he was to all appear- 
ances respectfully absorbed in what was being said 
to him. When the talk had ended and the visitor 
had bowed himself out, the President of Pennsyl- 
vania called in a secretary, handed him the memorial 
upon which the oration had been based, and told 
him to write to Mr. Morris in a week that the 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 151 

President had carefully considered for several days 
his admirably-put arguments and regretted that he 
did not feel free to change his views. Then he 
turned to Tom, who had been standing on the 
threshold. 

“ How can I serve you, young sir ? Have I the 
pleasure of knowing you?” 

“ I have never had the honor of being presented 
to Mr. Franklin, but I bring with me credentials 
from General Washington.” 

He laid the letter on the flat desk. Franklin bade 
him be seated. The seal was then broken and the 
letter read. It was reread. It was reread again. 

‘‘ Do you know the contents of the letter you have 
brought ? ” 

“ The General did me the honor to read it to me 
before sealing it. I remember he spoke of Your 
Excellency’s being able to confide in me — if you 
chose to do so. The General bade me say to you 
that I was taking a letter of similar tenor to Mr. 
Rufus King, of Newburyport and Boston.” 

General Washington dreams well,” said Frank- 
lin, tapping the letter with the great horn spec- 


1^2 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

tacles he had taken off his nose. “ He dreams well. 
But I fear his dreams will go by contraries. We 
must think whether they can be made reality. We 
must think hard. What has he said to you on this 
theme? ” 

Tom repeated the General’s talk as well as he 
could. Franklin seemed impressed both by Jeffer- 
son’s adhesion and Patrick Henry’s opposition. His 
eyes twinkled at the mention of the possible 
“ Whisky War.” He explained to Tom that if the 
mountaineers did fight for untaxed whisky, the 
fighting would not last long and it would scare 
Pennsylvania and probably other States into want- 
ing a stronger government. 

“ The gentleman who was speaking to me when 
you came in,” he said to Tom, is Mr. Robert Mor- 
ris, the financial genius^pf the Revolution, but not, 
unfortunately, of his own affairs. I hear he is 
near a debtor’s prison. But that is neither here 
nor there.” Morris’s imprisonment for debt soon 
afterwards was a shame to the country to which he 
had lent his private fortune, and a shame as well 
to Franklin, but the frugal philosopher rose above 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 153 

such things. He smiled shrewdly, too shrewdly, 
Tom thought, as he went on to say : “ Mr. Morris 



ROBERT MORRIS 

would have us not impose the whisky tax and pre- 
vent the threatened war. I did not tell him so, but 
methinks a little blood-letting in the Alleghanies may 



154 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

stimulate the whole body-politic along the seaboard 
from Boston Bay to the Savannah River. So I 
think we will have that Whisky War, Captain 
Strong. A man who cannot pay his own debts 
should not try to advise a statesman, — even as hum- 
ble a public servant as I am.” 

He put on his spectacles and read the letter again. 

I will give you an answer as you return from 
Boston.” 

“ Perhaps Your Excellency will tell me something 
now that I can repeat to Mr. King. I know he 
would value Your Excellency’s views.” 

“ Did General Washington tell you to say that 
to me ? ” 

“ ’Tis but a chance suggestion of mine own.” 

I thought it came from an older head. ’Tis 
good diplomacy. Well, Captain Strong, the late 
Commander-in-Chief says you can be trusted and 
I will trust you. Tell him — and tell Mr. King, too 
— that I am with them heart and soul. I say 
' them,’ because I believe Rufus King will stand 
with Washington. But tell them we must move in- 
directly. We can get a strong central government 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 155 

only by calling a constitutional convention. The 
States will be afraid of that and so Congress will 
not call it. Let us have a commercial convention — 
nominally, — something to do with taxes or trade. 
Let it grow into a constitutional one. This is only 
for your ear, young sir, for yours and Mr. King’s 
and General Washington’s. I will have my letter 
to him ready when you return.’^ 

The boy bowed and withdrew. The next morn- 
ing he bade adieu to “ Friend Martha ” and her 
father. Four days later, he rode into Elizabethport 
and took the ferry for his home. One flatboat per 
day carried the whole traffic between Philadelphia, 
New Jersey, and New York. 

A low, fat house, with a high-gabled attic that 
fronted on Broad Street, New York. The house 
had a little stoop, with a seat on each side of it. 
The door was cut in two, so the upper half could 
be opened and the lower still left shut. The door- 
knob and the great knocker were of brass, polished 
into the sheen of gold. On this summer morning 
flowers were blooming in the little yard. Every- 


156 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

thing in and about the house was spick and span. 
It looked like a home. It was a home, Tom Strong’s 
home. 

Tom had left his horses nearby, after they and 
he had been ferried across the Hudson. Saddle- 
bags on his arm, he walked up Broad Street from 
the waterfront. His springy steps rhymed to what 
his beating heart was saying: “ Home, sweet home.” 
He hurried from gateway to door, opened that, and 
rushed into the living-room that ran across the 
front of the house. His mother, seated at her sew- 
ing, rose in wild amazement. 

‘‘Tom, is it really you?” 

It really was he. Words, kisses, and hugs con- 
vinced her. He had written her from Mount Ver- 
non of his coming, but his letter had not reached her. 
It was a way letters had in those days. This is one 
reason why Washington preferred Tom as a letter- 
carrier. 

Seven blissful days mother and son spent to- 
gether. Her life had flowed on in the cheerful 
monotony of doing good to everybody her life 
touched. She had heard again from Hans Rolf. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 157 

Now that there was peace and he ran no further 
risk of exchanging his Pennsylvania farm for an 
English scaffold, he no longer hid his letters in 
sausages. His mother was to start from Hesse ere 
long. He was to meet her in New York. Then he 
would see “ Mutter Strong ” and “ mein twin Tom.” 
If they and Zed wouldn’t come to live with him, 
wouldn’t they all come and make him a little visit, 
say six months or a year ? From Zed, too, had come 
a characteristic message in the shape of a glossy 
beaver’s skin. Trapped in the far Northwest of 
that day, now the Middle West, it had been carried 
by strange hands, Indian, French, frontiersman, in 
strange ways, by dog-sledge, by canoe, by creaking 
ox-cart, until it reached New York and Mrs. Strong. 
It was wrapped about a letter such as she had never 
seen. For the letter was on birchbark instead of 
on paper, and had been written with the juice of 
some shrub instead of with ink. 

There’s plenty of beaver,” Zed wrote, they’re 
thicker than the Injuns. When I get off my pack of 
pelts, then, if I’ve kept my own scalp from the red- 
skins, I’m goin’ West, ’way West. The further I 


158 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

go, the better I like it. A man can breathe on the 
prairies. I’m cornin’ back to see ye, Mother Strong, 
and those other two sons of yours, but don’t blame 
me if I get Tom and Hans to head West with me 
afterwards. This is God’s country.” 

Unlike his mother’s, Tom’s life had been in 
strange places. Philadelphia, Annapolis, Shep- 
herdstown. Mount Vernon became more than names 
to her as Tom made vivid pictures of what he had 
seen and done in them. She worshiped Washington 
and admired Franklin, but she liked best Tom’s tales 
about Rumsey. The quaintness, the oddity, and the 
niceness of the man who had dreamed a great dream 
in the Virginia wilderness and had faced so man- 
fully the dream’s not coming true appealed to 
her. 

“ I almost love your Mr. Rumsey,” she said once. 

“ You could quite love your Mr. Rumsey, if you 
wanted to,” laughed Tom. Then he told her of 
Rumsey’s whilom hope of marrying her, and of how 
he had crushed Rumsey’s hopes. 

“ You were right, of course, Tom, dear,” said the 
widow. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 159 

But I think it made her younger to know Rum- 
sey had longed for her, and the knowledge of that 
longing certainly did not diminish her liking for 
the Virginian. 

Saying good-by for the trip to Boston was not 
so hard, for the boy was soon to return. In fact 
Mrs. Strong laughed when she said good-by. Tom 
had announced that he was going up the Hudson and 
thence through Massachusetts. The shorter road 
was by way of Connecticut, the way the stage- 
coaches ran. His choice of a route might have 
seemed strange to other people, not so to his mother. 

“ Good-by, Tom, dear,” she said, and added : 
“ Give my love to Miss Betsey Carhart.” Then she 
laughed. And Tom laughed, a bit foolishly, and 
rode northward to Newburgh, where he certainly 
saw Miss Betsey and certainly gave her his mother’s 
love, for he wrote home to that effect. He did not 
tell the rest of his talk with Miss Betsey, but his 
letter sounded happy — so happy, indeed, that Mrs. 
Strong cried a little over it. From Newburgh he 
pushed on through the Berkshires — and found him- 
self in a country that was at war. 


i6o Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

The men of Massachusetts, having won freedom, 
found they had not won perfect happiness. Free- 
dom is one element, a great element, in happiness, 
but it is only one. There are many others. The 
small farmers, the few mechanics, of western 
Massachusetts found life hard after the war. War 
always brings disorder, always upsets things. Put- 
ting things to rights afterwards is not easy. The 
soldier found it hard to become a shoemaker again. 
The captain had grown beyond the country-store he 
had to tend once more. Men who had seen a stricken 
field of battle found their own peaceful fields grow 
monotonous, as they guided the plow around the big 
stones that covered so much of the surface. Debt 
pressed upon them. Taxes had to be paid. The 
seacoast felt the quickening touch of commerce as 
soon as the war was over. The Berkshire farms 
did not. They clamored for relief by laws which 
the Assembly, sitting in Boston, controlled, they 
thought, by the wealth of Boston, would not give. 
They asked for paper money and were refused. 
They asked that cows and horses should be made 
legal tender and were refused. They had just re- 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captam i6i 

belled successfully against England. So now they 
rebelled against Boston. News traveled slowly in 
those days of no railroads, no telegraphs, few travel- 
ers, and fewer mails. As Tom drew near Spring- 
field, in Massachusetts, he heard rumors of war. 
When he got there, he found war. A couple of 
gray-eyed farmers held him up three miles outside 
of Springfield. Their guns, which had probably 
seen Bunker Hill and Lexington, and perhaps Tren- 
ton and Yorktown, were leveled at him as he was 
bidden to dismount. His statement of who he was 
and why he was bound for Boston — on private 
business, he said — was received with suspicion. 

Where’d ye come from?’^ 

‘‘From New York.” 

“ Why didn’t ye go Connecticut way ? ” 

Tom didn’t choose to tell them why he had come 
by way of Newburgh. They were in no mood to 
believe him if he had. They held him prisoner 
until a group of their comrades, going from the 
plow to the battlefield, as they had done many a 
time before, plodded by on the way to Spring- 
field. 


1 62 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

“ Take this young springald to headquarters,” 
his captors said. “ Dan’l ’ll know what to do with 
him. Mebbe he’s all right and mebbe he ain’t. We 
dunno. But this ain’t no time for strangers to be 
riding two bosses through the country. He sez he 
cum from York and is bound for Bosting. Queer 
way to make that journey.” 

So Tom and his horses were taken into Spring- 
field and left under guard in the yard of a residence 
there, which Daniel Shays had made his headquar- 
ters, in this time of war. The guard was a gar- 
rulous, good-natured giant, who gossiped freely 
with his prisoner. 

‘‘What are you fighting for?” asked Tom. 

“ Wal, we want plenty o’ paper money to pay off 
our debts, and we don’t want to pay no taxes.” 

“ How’s the State to be run without taxes ? ” 

“ I dunno, son, but Dan’l does. Dan’l Shays is 
goin’ to fix it.” 

Presently Tom was taken within the house and 
into the presence of “ Dan’l.” 

Daniel Shays had been an ensign at the battle of 
Bunker Hill, and had won a captaincy by good 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 163 

service in the army to the end of the war. He was 
now a “ rebel ” for the second time — and a general. 

A group of nondescript officials lounged about the 
room. They all took a hand in examining Tom. As 
several questions were asked him at once, some 
confusion resulted. However, he told his story. 
Amicable chuckles followed his avowal of coming 
by way of Newburgh to see a young lady.” The 
boy’s frank face and smiling good-nature predis- 
posed his judges in his favor at first. But when he 
was asked why he was going to Boston and he re- 
fused to tell, there was a change. Suspicion gleamed 
in every eye. 

‘‘ I bet the New Yorkers is cornin’ up the Hud- 
son to take us in the rear,” suggested one man, “ and 
this here youngster’s a sort of advance guard.” 

What papers had he upon him ? ” said Shays. 

The guard shook his head. I dunno. I ain’t 
searched him. Shall I git his saddlebags ? ” 

While he was getting them, Tom took from his 
pocket Washington’s letter to Rufus King and laid 
it on the table behind which Shays sat. 

“That is the only paper I have with me,” he 


164 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

said. “ It is a letter from General Washington ’’ — 
there was a stir of surprise— ‘‘ to your Mr. Rufus 
King. I am to deliver it and return to Mount Ver- 
non with Mr. King’s answer.” 

What’s Washington writing King for ? He’s a 
Virginian. Let him ’tend to things to hum.” 

“ Open the letter and see if ’tis from Washing- 
ton.” 

“ Rufus King is a friend of ours. He don’t be- 
lieve in oppressin’ the people. A letter to him must 
be all right.” 

There was a chorus of talk. 

“ Well,” said Shays, “ we’ll vote on it. As many 
as thinks the letter ought to be opened say aye.” 
There were four ayes. “ As many as thinks it 
oughtn’t to be opened say no.” There were five 
noes. Daniel Shays voted that way. 

“ Well, young man, ’tis a close squeak, but you’ve 
won out. Take your letter and one of your bosses 
and clear out, Bosting-way. Adjutant, you give 
Mr. Strong a safe-conduct. T’other boss is con- 
fiscated for warlike purpusses.” 

It was useless to object. Of the two steeds, Tom 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 165 

chose Billy-boy, because Washington had presented 
him to him. He promised to give no news of what 
he had seen within the lines of Shays’ army and 
rode away, his safe-conduct in his pocket. It was a 
needed protection for himself and his horse. Thrice 
he was stopped on his eastward way, but Shays’ rude 
signature commanded respect, so thrice he was bid- 
den to go on. A few hours after he had left the 
last outpost, he met the vanguard of the Massa- 
chusetts troops marching to suppress ‘‘ Shays’ Re- 
bellion.” 

These troops were beaten back. The rebellion 
went on until the spring of 1787. Every attempt to 
open a court west of Boston meant a riot. At Con- 
cord, one Job Shattuck headed a mob of seven hun- 
dred men and announced that the people ” had 
decided that all debts should be considered paid. 
“ Yes, Job,” shouted a bystander, “ we know all 
about them two farms you can’t never pay for.” 
The mob laughed, but it made the judges adjourn 
court. One sheriff, threatened with lynching, es- 
caped death by a bit of shrewd Yankee humor. The 
crowd clamored to hang him because his legal fees 


1 66 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

were extortionate. “ Gentlemen,” he shouted, ‘‘ I 
will hang you all for nothing, with the greatest 
pleasure.” With a roar of laughter, he was let go, 
unharmed. In February, 1787, nearly five thou- 
sand Massachusetts militia routed Shays at Spring- 
field, chased him northward through blinding snow- 
storms, and finally broke up his forces and captured 
many of them. In March, fourteen leaders were 
found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. 
They were finally pardoned. So was Shays, after 
a year of exile in Vermont. He died in 1825. Dur- 
ing his later years, he lived on a pension given him 
for his services in the Revolution. 

Billy-boy carried Tom in three days from Spring- 
field to the small town of Boston. There were 
some spacious and stately homes there, but most of 
the houses were of wood, small, unpainted, mean. 
A few of the main streets were paved with rough 
cobblestones and had sidewalks, equally rough, sepa- 
rated from the streets by posts and a gutter. The 
pavements were so precious that a horseman who 
galloped over them was by law fined 83 cents. 
There were no street numbers. Tradesmen ad- 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 167 

vertised their wares “ at the sign of the Blue Boar,” 
or “ at the Goat and Compasses.” The narrow 
streets showed an endless succession of golden 
balls, of blue gloves, of crowns and scepters, dogs 
and rainbows, elephants and horseshoes.” The 
signs had no relation to the goods to be sold. You 
could buy gloves at the Elephant and cutlery at the 
Blue Glove. The golden balls, once the proud ar- 
morial bearing of the greatest bankers of the Middle 
Ages and now degraded to a pawnbroker’s sign, 
then might mean anything, — a dry-goods shop or a 
smith’s forge. Tom had never seen in the sober 
Dutch village of Manhattan such a display as met 
his eyes in Boston-town. 

He finally found Rufus King at Newburyport. 
King was in his thirty-second year, a fine figure of 
a man. He had been born in Maine, then a part 
of Massachusetts, in 1755. Graduated from Har- 
vard soon after our glorious defeat at Bunker Hill, 
he had served in the Continental Army and then 
flung himself into politics on the people’s side. He 
was resting now from his labors as one of the Mas- 
sachusetts delegates to the Continental Congress. 


1 68 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

He gave Tom a stately but pleasant welcome, such 
as a messenger from Washington was sure to com- 
mand, but he declined to commit himself to any 
definite decision. “ Tell the General I will care- 



RUFUS KING 

fully consider the letter I have had the honor to 
receive from him and will reply thereto from New 
York, during the next session of the Congress.’^ 
That was all he would say, and with that Tom 
had to ride away. Later that year King became a 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 169 

strong supporter of a strong central government. 
When he rejoined his colleagues in Congress, he 
found the weak government of that day starving to 
death for lack of money. Things had gone from 
bad to worse. In 1781 the national expenses were 
$9,000,000. They are now about $500,000,000. 
Congress had borrowed $4,000,000 and asked the 
States for the other $5,000,000. A year later it 
had received $422,000 from nine States and noth- 
ing from the other four. Of the money it asked for 
in 1783, it received only one-fifth by midsummer 
of 1785. In the year of 1786 it received prac- 
tically nothing. One of King’s first duties after he 
reached New York was to go with James Monroe 
of Virginia, afterwards the fifth President of the 
United States, to ask Pennsylvania whether she 
would not please send a few dollars to the Con- 
gress so that the wheels of government might con- 
tinue to turn. The experience converted Rufus 
King to Federalism. People who believed as Wash- 
ington and Hamilton did, in a government strong 
enough to be respected, were called Federalists. 
King became a citizen of New York in 1788. The 


170 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

next year he and General Schuyler were elected the 
first United States Senators from the Empire 
State. In that and other capacities he served his 
country well until 1825. His is one of the names 
on the long roll of men who deserved well of the 
Republic and have been forgotten. What he was, is 
forgotten. What he did, remains. 

So Tom, refreshed by good bed and board in 
Boston, turned back homewards. This time he chose 
the short way home, through Connecticut, for Shays 
was keeping all western Massachusetts in disorder 
and riot, and duty bade him run no risk of further 
delay. He reached Coventry in Connecticut late on 
a Saturday night. He expected to leave it early on 
Sunday morning, but in this he had not reckoned on 
the famous Blue Laws of Connecticut. If they did 
not, as has been alleged, forbid a man to kiss his 
wife on Sunday, they did most strictly forbid travel- 
ing on that day. A few years before, Washington 
had entered in his diary, under a Connecticut date- 
line, that it being “ contrary to the law and dis- 
agreeable to the People of this State to travel on 
the Sabbath day — and my horse after passing 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 171 

through such intolerable roads wanting rest — I 
stayed at Perkins’ tavern (which, by the bye, is not 
a good one) all day — and a meeting-house being 
within a few rods of the door I attended the morn- 
ing and evening services & heard very lame dis- 
courses from a Mr. Pond.” 

There was also a meeting-house within a few rods 
of the Coventry inn. Both fronted on the village 
square. In its center stood the stocks, a contrivance 
of that day which held an offender’s feet and hands 
firmly, but permitted him, as he sat in the stocks, 
to move his head with a certain freedom, which 
made it all the more amusing for the children of 
the God-fearing populace to throw vegetables and 
eggs at him. There were stocks in New York. 
Tom had seen stout offenders fastened into them. 
I fancy he had sometimes in his very youthful days 
vied with other boys in throwing mealy potatoes at 
the sinners. He was to learn something about sit- 
ting in the stocks now. 

The landlord had grumbled over Tom’s order of 
an early breakfast and had remonstrated with him 
for his proposed Sabbath-breaking, but our hero felt 


ij2 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

it his duty to press on and insisted upon an early 
meal. He got it. Also he got out his horse, 
mounted, and rode off. And then he got arrested. 
A sour-faced man in black stood at the door as he 
started and gave no answer to Tom’s cheery good- 
morning greeting. Another sour-faced man stood 
ten feet away. As Billy-boy reached him, he grasped 
the bridle. The first man said to the astonished 
rider : 

“Ye cannot break the Sabbath in Coventry. Get 
ye down ! ” 

Tom touched Billy-boy with the spur and gave 
him his head, but Sour-Face No. 2 hung upon the 
bridle and Sour-Face No. i produced a bell-mouthed 
blunderbuss and threatened to use it. There was 
nothing to do but dismount and pay the penalty of 
the outraged law. 

“ Not only have ye broken the Sabbath, but ye 
have defied the tithing-man.” 

It was the tithing-man who spoke, Sour-Face No. 
I. This defiance was even worse in his eyes than 
the original offense. He summoned to his aid the 
landlord, the hostler, and the one other guest at 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 173 

the inn, a grave person in rusty black who eyed the 
criminal with horror. Before such a force, the cap- 
tive was helpless. 

‘‘We cannot break the Sabbath by trying him 
this day,” said the tithing-man. 

“ Never did I see such a criminal face; he is cer- 
tainly a thief,” said the other guest. 

“ Belike he is a murderer, fleeing from pursuit,” 
suggested the innkeeper. Tom could not help laugh- 
ing and this was taken as another proof of desperate 
villainy. 

“ We’ll put him in the stocks till the morrow,” de- 
cided the tithing-man. 

“In the stocks? Nonsense,” protested Tom. 
“ The stocks are for people tried and found guilty. 
I haven’t been tried and I’m not guilty. Put me 
in jail, if you choose, but not in the stocks.” 

“If ye’re put in jail, a man will have to stay 
away from church to watch ye. In the stocks, ye’ll 
be safe by yerself. And ’twill be a lesson for the 
children.” 

There was a smart little scuffle. Tom had no 
idea of going into the stocks peaceably. The grave 


174 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

person in rusty black received a fine black eye and 
the tithing-man lost a couple of teeth, but the fight 
was too unequal to last. Behold, then, Tom, at 
seven o’clock of a beautiful October morning, his 
feet and hands firmly fixed in the stocks, his face 
glaring grimly at the church porch, his heart in a 
fury of rage. His one consoling thought was that 
the boys of Coventry probably would not be per- 
mitted to throw things at him on a Sunday. 

As a matter of fact, all Coventry kept within 
doors throughout the day, except for the morning 
and afternoon church services. On the way to and 
from these, everybody walked by the criminal. In 
low voices, everybody agreed that he looked the part. 
Now, Tom had really good looks. He was not quite 
what his fond mother thought him, the handsomest 
boy in the world, but he was a good boy, and he 
looked so, — until people saw him in the stocks. 
At noon the tithing-man gave him some bread and 
water, but refused to talk with him. 

‘‘ ’Tis no day for idle chatter,” he said, severely. 

Ye can talk to-morrow, when ye’re called on for 
an explanation of your crimes.” 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 175 

The weary day wore on until dusk. Then Tom 
became aware of a tall man striding towards him, 
followed by the tithing-man. 

‘‘ I tell ye, deacon,” said the tall man, “ I had to 
travel here to-day. ’Twas a work of necessity. 
The scamp stole all the money I was paid in Albany 
for my pelts and scooted. I traced him to near 
Coventry and lost him. If so be ye’ve got him in the 
stocks, it’s splendid. Let me see him.” 

He bent over in the dusk to see the criminal. 

Jehosaphat ! ye fool. It’s the boy ! ” he shouted. 
“ He ain’t no criminal. Why, Tom, Tom, my son, 
is it really ye ? ” 

It was Zed Pratt who had come up. The tall 
trapper was wild with wrath. Tom was too tired 
and dazed to be surprised. 

Get me out. Zed,” he said. I can’t stand this 
over night.” 

Over night? Ye shan’t stand it a minnit. Dea- 
con, this is Tom Strong, my boy Tom. Gimme the 
key. Let him out.” 

The tithing-man demurred, but when Zed prom- 
ised to be responsible for Tom’s appearance in court 


176 Tom Strong, Boy- Cap tain 

the next day, the prisoner was released. Zed had 
a sister living at Coventry, as the readers of “ Tom 
Strong, Washington’s Scout ” may remember. 
Everybody there knew him. Everybody knew 
his word was as good as his bond. So Tom, 
stiff and sore, staggered across the village-green 
on Zed’s arm to Zed’s sister’s house, where he 
was made most heartily welcome. On the way, 
they stopped at the inn for Tom’s belongings. There 
Zed came face to face with the grave man in rusty 
black, who had been so sure Tom was a thief. Zed 
seized him with a shout of triumph. It was the 
robber he had been pursuing from Albany. The 
bag of doubloons he had stolen was found in his 
luggage. He was promptly set in the stocks from 
which Tom had been freed. In the morning, how- 
ever, he was no longer there. Zed laughingly con- 
fessed that he had set him free. 

'' He was a raskil,” said Zed. “ That’s plumb 
sure. But I got back my money and I jest cudn’t 
hev a man shut up in jail for years. Think of it, 
boy. Jest think of it. Shut up in one place. No 
chance to move roun’. No chance to breathe.” The 


177 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

trapper stretched out his long arms and took deep 
breaths of the pure, frosty air. “ P’raps he’ll git 
honest. Anyways I’m glad he’s got away.” 

A little judicious talk Zed had with the deacon 
and a little judicious use of a doubloon or two con- 
vinced the deacon that “ ’twan’t wuth while ” to push 
the complaint against Zed’s friend Tom. The boy- 
captain found himself free to ride away, on Mon- 
day morning. Zed rode beside him and pointed out 
sundry places, among them the house of “ Parson 
Hale,” the father of Nathan Hale, who gave his life 
for his country, despite Zed’s and Tom’s reckless 
attempt to rescue him. The trapper and the boy had 
much to talk about, as they plodded towards Man- 
hattan Island. Plodding was the only possible thing 
to do. In the early mornings the roads were frozen 
hard, but frozen into ridges and ruts. By noon the 
sunshine had made them mudholes again. Wash- 
ington had rightly set them down in his diary as 
“ intolerable.” They passed more than one wagon 
and one stage-coach, broken down and abandoned. 
As they came into Manhattan Island by the Old 
Post Road, they caught up with the coach that 


178 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

had left Boston two days before Tom did. Hub- 
deep in mud, it crawled along. Its unhappy pas- 
sengers, worn out with their twelve-day journey, 
were vowing never to travel again. Their descend- 
ants can go from Boston to San Francisco in much 
less than half the time they had spent in going from 
Boston to New York. 

Our two travelers felt their spirits rise as they 
pushed down by the Murray House, where Tom’s 
quick wit and Mrs. Murray’s ready aid had saved 
Putnam’s army from capture by General Howe, ten 
years before; past the Collect Pond; and so, by Wall 
Street and Broad Street, to home, where Tom’s 
mother came rushing out of the little house to wel- 
come her boy as only mothers can welcome, and 
to greet ‘‘ son Zed,” twenty-five years older than she 
was, with almost equal warmth. 







awes 


03 fl 


^ smiH 





CHAPTER VIII 


'"JpHE three sat up late that night. Tom had his 
story to tell and Zed his. This last was a 
story of many adventures. The trapper had been 
far beyond the Mississippi to the west and he had 
floated far down it to the south, almost to Natchez. 
He had fought with Indians on the prairies and had 
dodged Spanish commandants on the shores of the 
Father-of-Waters. Then he had worked his way 
northward again to Lake Superior and had come 
down the Great Lakes, trapping in regions where 
the Hudson’s Bay Company ruled by right of shot- 
gun and where the ‘‘ free trapper ” was in deadly 
peril from both white man and redskin. He had 
stolen around the British posts at Mackinaw and 
Detroit and on Lake Erie and had finally reached 
Albany, the great American fur-market of that 
time, with many bales of furs. 

“ A good price I got for them,” said Zed, but 

’twas after hard bargaining. There’s a new man 
i8o 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain i8i 

in the business there. He’s gettin’ it all. He’s a 
German. John Jacob Astor they call him. He 
looks like a pauper and dresses like a pauper and 
lives like a pauper, but he pays you your doubloons 
on the nail when he’s made his bargain. They say 
he married his wife ’cause he saw her take off a 
red petticoat and give it to a squaw for a skin that 
was wuth six petticoats. His eyes goes right 
through ye. He’s got a shop down here in York. 
I promised to go in and see him when I got here. 
Don’t let me forget to do it.” 

Of all the marvelous things Zed had done, 
‘‘ Mother Strong ” was sure that quite the most 
marvelous was his chasing the thief to Coventry 
just in time to save Tom from a night in the stocks. 

“ It was Providence did that,” said Mrs. Strong. 
“ Wonders never cease.” 

The next morning she was even more sure that 
wonders never cease. For while the three were at 
breakfast, there was a tremendous knock on the door 
and when Tom sprang to open it, a bronzed and 
bearded giant stood there, to whose hand there 
clung a weazened little woman about half as big as 


1 82 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

he. She clung as if the world would come to an 
end if once she let go. Indeed she felt so. The 
giant was Hans Rolf. The little woman was his 
widowed mother, a Hessian peasant, speaking only 
German, who had never been beyond the village in 
which she was born until she had set out on this far 
journey, to spend the rest of her years with her 
Americanized son. She had landed that morning. 
Hans had arrived in New York from his farm near 
York, Pennsylvania, just in time to meet her and 
to keep her from going quite mad with loneliness 
and fear. He had brought her straight to Mrs. 
Strong. 

“ Yah, ha ! ” roared Hans. “ Mutter Strong, here 
is Mutter Rolf. Mein twin Tom, how you vos? 
And Captain Pratt! Nodings could be better! 
Now, Mutter, you kisses everybody!” 

Mrs. Strong already had the little old woman in 
her arms. She kissed her tenderly and placed her 
at the table, comforting her and cooing to her, talk- 
ing to her with her eyes almost as effectually as if 
she had been pouring greetings in German upon her. 
The table was quickly replenished. Mrs. Rolf ate 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 183 

little, but Hans had brought with him an appetite fit 
for the giant that he was. Except for an occasional 
stop to kiss “ Mutter Strong ” or his own mother, 
to shake hands again with Zed or to give a bear’s- 
hug to Tom, he ate for an hour. Then Mrs. Strong 
turned the three men out of doors, so that Mrs. 
Rolf could have the first sound sleep of her long 
journey, and the men could have a long talk. 

Gracious lady, you are indeed too good to an 
old woman,” said Mrs. Rolf in German, as she found 
herself laid in a great bed with lavender-scented 
sheets, while her beautiful hostess sat beside her, 
patting her hand till she should fall asleep. Mrs. 
Strong did not understand the words, but she did 
the tone. 

“ For Rolf,” she answered, ‘‘ for Rolf,” and 
smiled divinely. The English words were near 
enough the German to let the old woman understand. 

Gott sei Dank,” she said softly and was asleep. 

Meanwhile Zed and Hans and Tom were walk- 
ing up and down Battery Park, old man and young 
man and boy, talking together as eagerly as if they 
had all been of the same age, all with their lives 


184 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

before them. Hans urged them both to go back to 
York with him and take up farms. Zed wanted the 
other two to hear the call of the wild, and seek a free 
life on the great prairies. Tom pleaded with the 
others to go to Mount Vernon with him. He was 
sure Washington would have work for all of them 
together somewhere. But the three friends could 
not lead one life. Hans had his farm, his wife, his 
child, his mother. Tom had three anchors, Wash- 
ington, Mrs. Strong, and Betsey Carhart. Only 
Zed had all the world before him where to choose. 

The Battery was then the fashionable promenade 
of New York. People were beginning to throng 
upon it, as the three friends strolled and talked. It 
was a small spot, not one-quarter the size of the 
present park, most of which was under water then. 
Mrs. Alexander Hamilton gave Tom a gracious 
smile and bow, stopped him, indeed, long enough 
to send a condescendingly kind message to his ‘‘ good 
mother.” Colonel Hamilton himself, hurrying from 
his law-office in Wall Street to join his wife, shook 
hands with Zed and Tom and acknowledged Hans 
Rolf’s awkward salute. He took Tom aside. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 185 

“ The General wrote me you had been at Mount 
Vernon.” 

“ I had that honor, Colonel.” 

‘‘ And how about the mission upon which he sent 
you ? ” 

His Excellency will doubtless tell you of it.” 

Hamilton laughed. “ But you don’t intend to tell 
me yourself. You were always discreet beyond 
your years. I know you are going back to Mount 
Vernon. When do you start?” 

“ In case His Excellency wishes me to go, I shall 
of course do so.” 

“Will you take him a message from me?” 

“HI go, with all the pleasure in the world.” 

“ Tell him Rufus King is coming our way faster 
than he himself knows; that he will carry Massa- 
chusetts with him ; and that General Schuyler and I 
can manage New York, despite George Clinton — 
and despite that accursed scoundrel, Aaron Burr.” 

Hamilton’s eyes flashed with anger as he pro- 
nounced Burr’s name. There was a deep gulf of 
hate between the two. It grew deeper still, up to 
that fatal day on the heights of Weehawken when 


1 86 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Aaron Burr’s bullet pierced Alexander Hamilton’s 
great heart. 

Tom rejoined his friends. They walked together 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR 
After a painting by G. C. Stuart 

to a dark little shop, nearby, where bales of furs 
left scanty room for the table and two chairs that 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 187 

were all the office furniture of John Jacob Aston 
He sat there, a little round-bellied man, like a 
spider, already spinning the web of one of the great 
fortunes of the world. The little man never for- 
got a face. He knew Zed instantly. 

‘‘ How you do. Captain Pratt ? I glad know your 
friends, but they take walk while we talk business, 
nicht wahr? Business, it does not talk itself well 
when many beoples by.” 

So Tom and Hans strolled homewards, while 
Zed sat down in the second chair and Astor opened 
a battery of questions upon him. He knew Zed 
had been in what was then the Far West. He 
wanted to know more. He had him sketch a map of 
the Mississippi, of the Great Lakes, and of the 
region beyond so far as Zed knew it or had heard 
about it. How about beaver? bear? foxes? deer? 
buffalo? His pudgy hands trembled as Zed told 
him of regions full of furs. He drew upon the map 
the shore of the Pacific. He outlined a great river 
where the Columbia flows. Nobody knew of its 
existence then. 


1 88 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

“ Dere must be river dere; dere must be!” 
he repeated. 

Then he drew his broad finger-tip down its course 
to the ocean, and said : “ Dere, Captain Pratt, dere 
is de — de — die zukunft — de future of dese United 
State. Vill you go dere for me ? Vill you make ein 
trading-post dere? I pays you veil, if you goes.” 

A great brain laid the foundation of the Astor 
fortune. If President Madison had backed up John 
Jacob Astor, the whole Pacific slope would be ours, 
from Mexico to Behring’s Straits. 

‘‘ Yes, Mr. Astor, I’ll go there if the boy will.” 

“De boy?” 

“ Tom Strong. He was here a minnit ago.” 

“ If he von’t go, dere’s plenty of odder boys.” 

“There’s only one boy for me, Mr. Astor, and 
that’s Tom.” 

“ Den run and fetch him. I wants you start 
quick.” 

So Zed walked over to Broad Street to try to per- 
suade Tom. However, as he came in sight of the 
house, he saw in front of it an exceedingly hand- 
some man, standing beside a splendid horse, talking 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 189 

to Tom. The stranger was not in uniform, but he 
looked every inch a soldier. Zed was not surprised, 
as he drew near, to recognize Light Horse Harry 
Lee ” of Virginia. He had seen him first when 
Light Horse Harry swept down on Paulus Hook 
that was, Jersey City that is, and recaptured the 
American prisoners there. Zed and Tom were two 
of them. Neither of them was likely to forget their 
rescuer. 

‘‘ Zed,” called Tom, “ come here. General Lee, 
may I present to you Captain Zed Pratt of the First 
Continentals? You saved us both when you rode 
your raid on Paulus Hook.” 

“ You were both worth saving,” laughed Lee, “ if 
half what Pve heard of you both since is true. Now, 
Captain Strong, don’t mistake the message Pve 
brought you from General Washington. He didn’t 
send me on purpose, but asked me to take it when 
he found out I was going to New York. He said 
he had told you to stay a full week with your mother, 
going and coming, and he didn’t like to shorten 
your visit, but he would like to see you at Mount 
Vernon as soon as you can get there.” 


190 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

“ Then it’s boots and saddle, General,” answered 
Tom. “ I’d like to hear that old bugle call again. 
I’m off to-day. My mother would not wish me to 
delay one minute when the General summons me.” 

“ I am charged with a message to your mother, 
too,” said Lee. May I enter and pay her my re- 
spects ? ” 

“ You honor us by doing so.” 

So the stately Virginian was presented in due 
form to Mrs. Strong, who received him with a 
courtesy as perfect as his own; to Mrs. Rolf, who 
was with difficulty kept from standing in his 
presence; and to Hans, who did stand, most of the 
time at a salute. 

“ General Washington bade me say. Mistress 
Strong, that he hopes you will pardon him for call- 
ing your son back so soon and that as you never 
hesitated to give him to him when there was danger, 
he believes you will not hesitate, now there is none.” 

“ I thank His Excellency for giving my son the 
chance to serve him. My gift of the boy was made 
once for all, when he took down his father’s gun 
from that fireplace and started for Long Island. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 191 

But please — please — ask His Excellency to let me 
sometime have Tom for a whole fortnight at a 
time. Is that too much for a mother to ask ? ” 

“ Faith, it sounds like a reasonable request, Mis- 
tress Strong, ril give it to His Excellency. He’s 
such a good son himself, I wish he had as good a 
mother as Tom Strong has.” 

“ Doubtless he hath one a thousand times better.” 

“ We don’t tell tales out of school in Virginia, 
but it’s an open secret Washington’s mother might 
be wiser than she is. I must away. Your servant, 
ladies.” 

Light Horse Harry Lee bequeathed one immortal 
phrase to American literature. It was he who said 
Washington was “ first in war, first in peace, first in 
the hearts of his countrymen.” 

He had scarcely left the house before Mrs. Strong 
was packing Tom’s saddlebags. Hans went to sad- 
dle Billy-boy. Zed sat disconsolately by. He told 
Tom of Astor’s offer and Tom thanked him for 
bringing it to him, but explained that he couldn’t 
possibly go to the Far West. Life held too many 
duties in the Near East. The noon-dinner was 


192 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

rather solemn. There was lack of appetite. Even 
Hans did not eat much more than three times as 
much as anybody else. They all walked down to 
the waterside, where Tom led Billy-boy on the ferry 
for Elizabethport. Zed called and Hans roared 
good-by. The two women waved their handker- 
chiefs. Tom had gone. 

The next day Hans and his mother started for 
York and Zed for Astor’s office. He came back to 
Mrs. Strong in a strangely serious mood. He had 
promised to go to the Pacific, overland, where no 
white man had ever trod, where savages swarmed, 
where the Hudson’s Bay Company would do its 
best to have him murdered, as soon as it heard of 
his journey. Perhaps the old trapper was beginning 
at last to feel his years. It was the first time Mrs. 
Strong had ever seen him dejected. 

“ I dunno what’s cum over me,” he said. ‘‘ I 
dunno. That’s a big man, that Mr. Astor. He’s 
giv’ me a big chance. I want to go and I’m goin’. 
But somehow, I ain’t none too sure I’m ever cornin’ 
back. I never felt this way afore. I wish I was 
sure of seein’ you again. Mother Strong, and — and 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 193 

— the boy. If anythin’ does happen, Mother Strong, 
you tell Tom ” 

There he stopped. Mrs. Strong was crying softly. 

“Who is going with you. Captain Zed?” 

“ There ain’t nobody. I’m goin’ alone.” 

“ Alone ? Through that wilderness ? Captain, 
you’re too old.” 

“ S’pose I am; s’pose I am. But if I can’t have 
Tom, I don’t want nobody.” 

He was firm in his resolve. Since he couldn’t 
have Tom, he started alone, three days later, after 
many hours’ talk with Astor. He went by way of 
Albany to Lake Erie, where he had hidden a canoe 
on a lonely shore when he last came back to civiliza- 
tion. He stood up now in the Strong living-room, 
every inch a man in his deerskin coat and shirt, 
breeches and leggings. A tomahawk hung in his 
belt on his right side. On the left were knife, 
powder-horn, and bullet-pouch. A pack of beads 
and other trifles for trading with the Indians was 
on his back. He put down his long rifle on the 
table. He lifted up his hands and prayed the God 
of the widow and the orphan to bless “ Mother 


194 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Strong and my boy Tom.” He thanked God for all 
they had been to him. He prayed God he might 
return to them. Then with a cheerful smile, he 
kissed Mrs. Strong good-by, put one of her hands 
for a moment on his own bowed head, smiled again 
as his keen eyes swept the familiar room, took up his 
rifle, put on his foxskin cap, and walked out of the 
door, gently closing it. Mrs. Strong opened it and 
looked after him. He never turned his head. 

Tom’s first stop for anything but food or sleep 
was at the Blue Cow, Philadelphia, where Friend 
Jonathan Brown and Friend Martha, his daughter, 
greeted Friend Thomas with grave smiles. He had 
such a delightful way of smiling himself that almost 
everybody who looked at him liked him. Even 
Benjamin Franklin, President of the Commonwealth 
of Pennsylvania, seemed glad to see him. Franklin 
listened attentively to the tale of the interview with 
Rufus King and seemed a bit disturbed by it, but 
his face brightened when he heard of Alexander 
Hamilton’s message. He gave Tom a bulky letter 
to Washington, and, as a crowning mark of favor. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 195 

handed him a copy of “ Poor Richard,” autographed 
by its august author. “ Read these maxims,” his 
manner seemed to say, “ and then look at me and see 
how great a man following them has made me ! ” 
The world has forgotten “ Poor Richard,” but it was 
once by far the most widely-read book in America 
and in France, where the presses could not print 
the translation fast enough for the multitudes eager 
to buy. 

Before Tom’s audience was over, another man 
was announced. 

'‘Stay,” said Franklin, “this is a worthy man 
who will interest you, — a Mr. John Fitch, who 
thinks he has invented a boat to go by steam.” 

As he spoke, Fitch entered. He was straight as an 
Indian and dark as an Indian. His eyes, hair, and 
face were dark. He was six feet two inches tall. 
He came in with rapid steps, swinging his arms vio- 
lently. His life had been hard. His melancholy face 
showed it. In his youth at Windsor, Connecticut, 
his father kept him at tasks too heavy for his years 
for long hours every day. He was apprenticed to a 
watchmaker, who starved him, preaching always of 


196 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

the sin of gluttony and giving him no chance to 
indulge in it. He tried button-making. He set up 
a silversmith’s shop at Trenton and lost everything 
when the British sacked that town. After a winter 
in the army at Valley Forge, he went to Kentucky 
as a surveyor. On his second trip there, he was cap- 
tured by Indians, taken into the interior of Ohio 
and made to run the gauntlet. A British officer 
ransomed him and took him to Detroit. When 
he was exchanged, he had made enough money in 
Detroit to repay the ransom and meet his ex- 
penses home. In April, 1785, he began drawings 
for a car to be moved by steam on ordinary roads. 
He did not then know there was such a thing as a 
steam-engine in existence. Soon afterwards he be- 
gan to plan a steamboat, not a suction-boat such as 
Tom had worked upon with Rumsey, but a paddle- 
boat. In lyS^, he had tried to interest Washington 
in his invention, but had found him committed to 
Rumsey, for whom ever afterwards he had a petu- 
lant hatred. Now he was seeking help from Frank- 
lin. In these days of giant corporations, with hun- 
dreds of millions of dollars, John Fitch’s proposal 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 197 

sounds oddly. His proposed capital was $800, in 
forty shares of $2*0 each. Of the $800, half was to 
go to him and half to be spent on the steamboat. 
He walked swiftly up to Franklin’s chair and said: 

“ Your Excellency, I can place all my shares if 
you will take five of them. Will you?” 

’Tis more than I can spare, my friend. I might 
take two.” 

“ Nay, Your Excellency, it must be five. How 
else can I name the boat after you? ” 

Was that your intention ? ” A smile of gratified 
vanity stole over Franklin’s face. 

“ With Your Excellency’s permission.” 

I care naught for such vain things, but an’ ye 
insist, ye may do so. And I will take the five 
shares.” 

Fitch’s Indian eyes shot fire. He stammered his 
thanks and went out, to begin a long career of hope 
and despair, of half-success and utter failure. He 
begged of Virginia and Maryland and Delaware and 
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and begged in vain. 
A like fate followed him in England and France. 
He worked his way home as a common sailor before 


198 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

the mast in 1794. In 1796, he withdrew, broken in 
body, spirit, and purse, to some land in Kentucky, 
which he had earned by making surveys of a larger 
tract. Two years later he died there. His very 
grave was forgotten. Yet he had launched a boat 
upon the Delaware which ran with paddles, impelled 
by steam, three miles an hour in still water. He 
was one of our great inventors. Truly, the way of 
the inventor is hard. 

A few days later, as Tom drew near Mount Ver- 
non, he heard the sound of hunting-horns. Billy- 
boy, jaded as he was by the long journey, pricked 
up his ears, neighed, and evidently longed for the 
chase. A fox dashed by, sprang upon a rail-fence, 
ran along it some rods, and was off again, over the 
hills. A pack of hounds in full cry made music in 
the air. They were checked for a moment at the 
fence, but an old hound, taught by experience every 
trick a fox could try, soon caught the scent again. 
He gave mouth. The pack yelped madly and fol- 
lowed him. There was a crash in a nearby cane- 
brake. Young Washington broke through. The 
General was close behind him. The field came scat- 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 199 

tering after them. Uncle and nephew waved a 
welcome to Tom as they flashed by. Both were 
riding hard to be in at the death. Soon after Billy- 
boy had walked up to the mansion and then, when 
Tom dismounted, had walked off with a brisker step 
to the stables, the two Washingtons rode up. The 
nephew was waving the fox-brush in triumph. The 
uncle was grimly smiling. As he leapt to the ground 
he said : 

“ Again welcome to my house. Captain Strong. 
Your room awaits you. My nephew will take you 
to it.” 

Tom soon felt at home in the well-ordered life 
of Mount Vernon.- He had made his report to the 
General about his talks with Franklin and King, and 
had given him the former’s letter. Men were com- 
ing and going daily. Messengers arrived from as 
far south as Savannah and from as far north as Bos- 
ton. Evidently something was on foot. Washing- 
ton offered no confidences and Tom asked for none. 
Except when he was doing something for his host, 
such as writing a letter or carrying one to some 
nearby plantation, he fished and shot with George 


200 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Augustine Washington and more than once he rode 
to hounds with Washington himself, cheering on 
Mopsey ” and “ Truelove,” “ Sweetlips ” and 
“ Music.” He studied, too, at his host’s suggestion, 
the administration of the plantation. He learned 
how corn and wheat were grown and harvested and 
sacked and shipped. He saw cloth grow on the 
looms and shoes on the lasts. He found out that 
every man and woman on the plantation, slave or 
free, had an allotted task and had to do it on time 
and well. He never forgot those lessons. They 
stayed with him and helped him all his life long. 
The lessons were manifold. 

Here is an account by General John Mason, son 
of George Mason of Virginia, of the life on his 
father’s plantation, four miles below Mount Vernon : 
“ It was very much the practice with gentlemen 
of landed or slave estates . . . so to organize them 
as to have considerable resources within themselves; 
to employ and pay but few tradesmen, and to buy 
little or none of the coarse stuffs and materials used 
by them. . . . Thus my father had among his 
slaves carpenters, coopers, sawyers, blacksmiths. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 201 

tanners, curriers, shoemakers, spinners, weavers, 
knitters, and even a distiller. His woods furnished 
timber and plank for the carpenters and coopers, 
and charcoal for the blacksmith; his cattle killed 
for his own consumption and for sale supplied 
skins for the tanners, curriers, and shoemakers; and 
his sheep gave wool and his fields produced cotton 
and flax for the weavers and spinners; and his 
orchards fruit for the distiller. His carpenters and 
sawyers built and kept in repair all the dwelling- 
houses, barns, stables, plows, harrows, gates, etc., 
on the plantations and the outhouses at the house. 
His coopers made the hogsheads the tobacco was 
prized in, and the tight casks to hold the cider and 
other liquors. The tanners and curriers, with the 
proper vats, etc., tanned and dressed the skins as 
well for upper as for lower leather to the full amount 
of the consumption of the estate, and the shoe- 
makers made them into shoes for the negroes. A 
professed shoemaker was hired for three or four 
months in the year to come and make up shoes for 
the white part of the family. The blacksmiths did 
all the ironwork required by the establishment, as 


202 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

making and repairing plows, harrows, teeth, chains, 
bolts, etc. The spinners, weavers, and knitters made 
all the coarse cloths and stockings used by the 
negroes and some of finer texture worn by the 
white family, nearly all worn by the children of it. 
The distiller made every fall a good deal of apple, 
peach, and persimmon brandy. . . . All these 

operations were carried on at the home house and 
their results distributed as occasion required to the 
different plantations. Moreover, all the beeves and 
hogs for consumption or sale were driven up and 
slaughtered there at the proper seasons, and what- 
ever was to be preserved was salted and packed away 
for after distribution. My father kept no steward 
or clerk about him. He kept his own books and 
superintended, with the assistance of a trusty slave 
or two, and occasionally of some of his sons, all 
the operations at and about the home house above 
described.” 

In those days the New England farmer had the 
same business ideal as the Virginia planter — to 
buy little or nothing. A Massachusetts farmer of 
that time writes : “ My farm gave me and my whole 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 203 

family a good living on the produce of it and left 
me, one year with another, one hundred and fifty 
silver dollars, for I never spent more than ten dol- 
lars a year, which was for salt, nails, and the like. 
Nothing to wear, eat, or drink was purchased, as 
my farm provided all.” 

Gunston Hall, George Mason’s place, still stands 
and is still a home. Its owner, Mr. Paul Kester, 
writes : 

“Of the seven or eight thousand acres which once 
belonged to it only five hundred now remain at- 
tached to the hall. The house itself is well pre- 
served, the terraced garden remains, and a box 
walk. George Mason, the author of the famous 
Virginia Bill of Rights and the Constitution of 
Virginia, is buried only a few hundred feet from 
the house he built and which he loved so dearly. 
Pilgrims come from all parts of the country to 
visit Gunston Hall; they are invariably admitted. 
Gunston was built in the last years of the reign of 
George II., 1758. Though small it is massive 
in construction and its interior is not unim- 
pressive.” 


204 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

George Washington, like George Mason, kept his 
own books and relied little upon hired superin- 
tendents. He used to ride over the home planta- 
tion every morning before breakfast. Martha 
Washington was no less busy. A feminine visitor 
to Mount Vernon in 1798, when Lady Washing- 
ton was sixty-seven, quite old enough to have won 
the right to rest, writes to a relative that “ the old 
lady ” always speaks of the years when she presided 
over the presidential court as “ her lost days.” 
“ Let us repair,” says this visitor, to the old 
lady’s room, which is . . . nicely fixed for all sorts 
of work. On one side sits the chambermaid, with 
her knitting; on the other, a little colored pet, learn- 
ing to sew. An old, decent woman is there, with 
her table and shears, cutting out the negroes’ winter 
clothes, while the good old lady directs them all, 
incessantly knitting herself. She points out to me 
several pairs of nice colored stockings and gloves she 
had just finished.” 

Bishop Meade quoted this letter and said, of the 
wives of other Virginia planters : How often have 
I seen, added to the above-mentioned scenes of the 



Gunston Hall 







Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 205 

chamber, the instruction of several sons and daugh- 
ters going on, the churn, the reel, and other domes- 
tic operations all in progress at the same time, and 
the mistress, too, lying on a sick-bed ! ” 

It would be hard to find a scene of happier, more 
constant activity than a great Virginia plantation 
of that time. Slavery was gentle. The life was 
patriarchal. Blacks and whites were regarded as 
one large family. Thus General Mason speaks in 
the passage quoted from him of shoes made by “a 
professed shoemaker . . . for the white part of the 
family.” 

Tom heard Washington make one of the two puns 
he is remembered to have made during his whole 
life. This one is not funny enough to cause regret 
that he did not make more. Among the guests at 
dinner one day was a clergyman. In the ordinary 
course of things a clerical guest would have ex- 
pected to say grace, but Washington did so himself, 
and when his wife protested, he answered : 

My dear, I wish clergymen and all men to know 
I am not a graceless man.” 

Martha Washington pouted perceptibly, and the 


2 o 6 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

General looked scared. At least Tom always said 
he did. 

Summoned to the General’s study one afternoon, 
Tom found him fingering a map, pinned down to 
the broad table, and supplemented by a great sheet 
of brown paper, upon which Washington had drawn 
sundry lines. 

I have here,” said the General, a map of the 
upper Mississippi and the Ohio. ’Tis the work of 
an ingenious mechanic, one John Fitch, who has 
been prisoner of the Indians and has seen much of 
what he has here drawn. This Fitch came here once 
to get me to subscribe for a steamboat he would 
fain build, but our friend Rumsey had been before- 
hand. I had to send him away empty-handed. 
Natheless he has had the courtesy to send me his 
map — he writes ’twas printed on a cider-press; per- 
haps I could use my press before the apples ripen 
to print something — and I have added somewhat 
to it.” 

He ran his finger over the additions. 

“ Here lies the Pacific. I told you once our flag 


would sometime go there.” 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 207 

“ Captain Pratt is taking it there now, Your Ex- 
cellency.” 

“ What mean you? ” 

“ There is a fur-trader in New York, newly ar- 
rived from Germany, a Mr. Astor. He has sent 
Zed — Captain Pratt — across the continent. He is to 
make a trading-post at a point about here ” — Tom 
put his finger on the map — “ where this Mr. Astor 
says there must be the mouth of a great river.” 

“ Good. ’Tis a fine plan. It must be a good 
brain that has thought that out and a stout heart 
that backs such a plan. It is a stout heart, too, that 
is to take Captain Pratt through such a journey. 
He is serving his country well. May he return in 
safety.” 

“ Amen,” said Tom. 

“ ’Tis another journey I would propose to you, 
Captain Strong; not as dangerous, but not without 
risk. Here is the lower Mississippi. Its western 
shore is all Spanish — at least it is to-day. From 
the Kentucky boundary south, the Spaniards claim 
all the eastern shore and occupy most of it. Be- 
sides their great town of New Orleans, they have a 


2 o 8 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

post at Natchez. I have marked it on the map. 
Now, Captain Strong, some day Natchez will be ours 
and New Orleans, too. The outlet of the great 
Mississippi Valley must be in American hands. 
Even now, we must have the right to trade there. 
That is denied us by the Spaniard. Kentucky grum- 
bles over this. I fear she may secede if she does 
not get the right to traie. I want you to go to 
Pittsburg and thence down the Ohio to the Miss- 
issippi, taking a boatload of goods with you, and 
thence down the Mississippi as far as the Spaniard 
will permit. Find out just what the difficulties are. 
Try by fair words to win your way to New Orleans. 
Your goods should pay your way. If the Spaniard 
seizes them, ’twill be no great price to pay for the 
knowledge you will get. Will you go?” 

“ Most gladly, Your Excellency.” 


CHAPTER IX 


A FEW days later, Billy-boy had carried Tom 
northward from Mount Vernon. Washington 
had given him full instructions and plenty of money. 
He was to make up his own party, buy his own 
boat and merchandise, and run his own campaign. 
He had ridden straight to York, in Pennsylvania, 
and had hired Hans Rolf to take the trip with him. 
Now, on the great turnpike that led to Pittsburg, 
three huge “ Conestoga wagons ” were lumbering 
in Indian file. Hans drove the first. Tom rode 
beside it. The three were full of pots and pans, of 
skillets and ovens, of axes and plows. The road 
was full of traffic. All the trade with the country 
west of the Alleghanies went over it. The wagons 
were as rough and rude as the men who drove them. 
Very rarely a light carriage appeared. Its occu- 
pants were lucky if some drunken wagoner did not 
purposely drive into the vehicle, smashing a pole, 

breaking a wheel, or upsetting the whole rig. At 
209 


210 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

nightfall each group of wagons stopped where wood 
and water were to be found. The horses or oxen 
were led to water, then picketed to graze. Camp- 
fires were lighted. Greasy food was greasily cooked. 
Pipes made their owners happy awhile. Then 
came sleep. At dawn everybody was up. By sun- 
rise the creaking wagons began their slow journey 
westward again. It was a hard life. Weaklings 
died of it. Only the strong remained. Day after 
day slipped by until Tom almost lost count of them. 

He was not lonely, partly because he had always 
in his mind a vision of what he was going to see, 
the majestic Mississippi; partly because he was up- 
lifted by the feeling that he, like Zed on his far 
journey, was serving his country; and partly be- 
cause he had Hans with him. Hans was a tower of 
strength. His experience on his farm had taught 
him not only how to drive a wagon well, but how 
to meet any kind of emergency. He could mend a 
broken axle and patch a rent in the bulging canvas 
top of the Conestoga wagon. He could cook, if not 
well, at any rate less badly than the other wagoners. 
His giant strength often got a wagon through a 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 21 1 

mudhole that seemed bottomless. And his splen- 
did spirits helped everybody in everything. He had 
probably never heard of John Adams of Massa- 
chusetts, afterwards the second President of the 
United States, and had certainly never read his say- 
ing: “Let us be cheerful whatever happens; cheer- 
fulness is not a sin in any times,” but he practised 
that saying every minute of every day. He was not 
a man of much brain, but he had a great heart. 
When he laughed, the woods rang; even the draft- 
animals seemed to pull harder; and every man who 
heard the giant’s gleeful roar buckled down to his 
task. 

Finally Tom’s caravan bumped its way into Pitts- 
burg, a tiny town of a hundred buildings and a 
thousand people. Though it was the market-place 
of the West, it grew slowly. As late as 1795 a 
traveler described it as “ a thriving town containing 
at present about 200 houses, 50 of wch are brick and 
framed & the remainder Log.” 

The first thing to do was to buy a boat. That 
was not so easy, for the rush of emigration to 
Kentucky had set in, and two or three flatboats left 


212 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Pittsburg every day. Practically none returned. 
When the pioneer reached his destination, he built 
his new home out of the timber and planks of his 
boat. However, Tom finally found a good one at a 
fair price. It was just a wooden box, with an ob- 
long flat bottom, with four sides five feet high. The 



EARLY OHIO RIVER FLATBOAT 


rear half was roofed over. Through a small square 
window at the stern, a long sweep ran out into the 
water and served as a rudder. Forward on each 
side was a hole, through which an oar could be 
plied. More oars were not needed in a boat built 
only to go down-stream. Front, sides, and rear 
were holes for rifle-fire. Rarely did a boat go down 
the Ohio without at least one brush with the In- 
dians. The covered space was for sleeping-quarters 
and for storage of the flour and tobacco which were 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 213 

to be bought in Kentucky for the New Orleans 
market. It was with these that Tom expected to 
make most money. A barrel of flour was worth 
twice as much in Louisiana as it was in Kentucky. 
A dollar’s worth of tobacco at Louisville brought 
five dollars on the levee at New Orleans. No won- 
der Kentucky insisted upon the free navigation of 
the Mississippi. She was then a county of Vir- 
ginia, but she was threatening to set up as an inde- 
pendent nation, nay, even to become part of Spain, 
unless her bacon and hams, her flour and tobacco 
could go unvexed under the Stars-and-Stripes to the 
Gulf of Mexico. 

Tom and Hans were loading the boat, when a sal- 
low, stout lad of about sixteen asked them for a 
job. His looks did not recommend him. His black 
eyes shifted their gaze uneasily. But it was hard 
to hire men on the frontier, especially to go beyond 
‘‘ the Ohio rapids.” There was need of at least 
four men in the crew. And when he said he came 
from New Orleans, could speak Spanish, knew the 
river, and knew a negro who would go, too, Tom en- 
gaged him on the spot. His name, he said, was Juan 


214 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Gregorio. His negro acquaintance, Jim, turned 
out to be rather old, but strong enough to be of use, 
and willing to work. Juan said Jim was not his 
slave, but had been hired to go to New Orleans for 
a year. Jim proudly assured Tom he was a free 
man. So the bargain was struck. The four loaded 
the boat quickly. The plows and the boxes of hard- 
ware were piled against the sides of the boat, leav- 
ing the center free, and also free access to the oars. 
In the roofed-in part, there was one mattress, — only 
one, for three of the crew must always be awake, 
two at the oars and one at the rudder-sweep. Pro- 
visions for the journey were put under cover. A 
flat sheet of iron was to be used to hold the fire for 
cooking. Four rifles hung from hooks. 

When all was ready, Tom walked up the river- 
bank to the “ Great West Hotel,” a log-hut of four 
rooms, where the man to whom he had sold his 
wagons and horses was to meet him to pay for them. 
He was also to take Billy-boy back to the East. He 
was there and he paid over the money, but he seemed 
to have something on his mind. Finally he blurted 


out : 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 215 

Say, stranger, ’tain’t none o’ my bizness, but 
I beam tell you wuz goin’ to take that boy Juan ’long 
with you. Be you?” 

“ Yes. Do you know anything against him? ” 

“ Wal, not exactly, but folks do say ” 

“ What do they say ? ” 

“ They sez Juan’s a Spanish spy ’n’ that he’s 
takin’ that pore old Jim, who’s as free as you ’n’ I 
be, down to Orleans to sell him ez a slave. And — 
stranger ” — his voice sank to a whisper — “ they sez 
Juan’s one of General Wilkinson’s men.” 

Who is General Wilkinson?” 

“ Lordy ! you don’t know who Wilkinson is ! Say, 
stranger, whar wuz you raised? Wilkinson’s the 
biggest man in Kentucky. I ain’t sayin’ nuthin’ 
agin Wilkinson. And p’raps Juan is all right. I 
dunno.” 

He shuffled away. Tom tried to forget what he 
had said against Juan, but did not quite succeed in 
doing so. He walked back to the boat. A man 
was leaning against the side of it, talking to Hans. 
He was well-built and wore his well-cut clothes with 
something of the air of a man of the world. Tom 


2 i 6 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

was rather surprised at his general appearance, but 
he knew all kinds of people were emigrating. He 
was more, surprised, however, to hear Hans say : 

“ Yah, ve go Natchez and New Orleans, too.’’ 

He had strictly cautioned his comrades not to 
talk of his plans and had spoken himself in Pitts- 
burg only of a trip to the rapids,” where by this 
time there was a tiny town called Louisville. He 
stopped short, vexed at Hans’s carelessness. The 
stranger turned around and saw him. 

You are Captain Strong? ” 

“ That is my name.” 

“ Mine is Charles Smith. Glad to meet you. Cap- 
tain. I’d like to go down the river with you. If 
you don’t think I can work my passage. I’ll pay for 
it, if you’ll take me.” 

“ I don’t believe ” 

“ Now, Captain, don’t say no. I’m an English- 
man and my wife is at Natchez. Gayoso, the com- 
mandant there, has given all us Englishmen notice to 
quit or else become Spanish subjects and I mean 
to turn American instead. I’ve just got to go there 
and take my wife away.” 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 217 

Now, the whole countryside knew that Gayoso 
had given such an order. Smith’s story was plau- 
sible enough. The cost of taking him would be al- 
most nominal. A fifth man to handle an oar or a 
rifle was worth having. 

“ All right,” said Tom. “ I’ll take you, but I 
want to push off soon. How soon can you be 
ready ? ” 

“ I’m ready now. I haven’t a soul to say good-by 
to. I don’t know anybody here except the wagoner 
who brought me in this morning, and I quarreled 
with him. He tried to overcharge me.” 

He stepped briskly on board, put down his rifle 
and buckskin bag, shook hands with Juan, to whom 
he introduced himself, and nodded to Jim. 

“ Shall I take an oar. Captain?” he asked. 

He and Juan took the oars and Jim the sweep, 
while Tom and Hans pushed the boat off the bank. 
The slow current of the Ohio caught her. Current 
and oars soon carried her around a low wooded 
point, which cut off Pittsburg from sight. The 
voyage had begun. Smith and Juan handled the oars 
well. It was evident that both of them knew how 


2i8 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

to manage a flatboat. Tom congratulated himself 
upon having them with him. He took Hans aside 
and chided him gently for having told Smith their 
plans. Hans stared, open-eyed and puzzled. 

“ Dot Schmidt tell me he seen you; dot you told 
him ve go Natchez and Orleans; dot you say he 
go mit us.” 

“ I never saw him in my life before.” 

“ Den he tell me von big lie.” 

‘‘ I don’t like the looks of it one little bit,” said 
Tom, “ but perhaps you misunderstood him, Hans. 
You talk splendid English, Hans, of course, but 
you don’t always understand it just right, do you? ” 
I understand him alretty goot. He tell me von 
big lie,” insisted Hans. 

‘‘ Well, if he’s really going to get his wife and 
she’s alone down there, perhaps he thought he had a 
right to lie so as to get there. He knows how to row 
and I don’t see that he can do us any harm. But 
I don’t like his lying. We must keep our eyes open, 
Hans. I’ll arrange the work so that either you or 
I will always be on guard. I’m captain and you’ll 
be mate.” 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 219 

Hans grinned with pleasure at his promotion. He 
had come with Tom partly to escape for a while 
from the monotony of life on a farm, chiefly for 
the love he bore the boy-captain, but he had not 
expected the honor of being second in command. 
He drew himself up to his full height. 

“ Meine mutter vill be proud of her son, de mate 
of de Vot is de boat’s name. Captain?” 

The ‘ Lovely Betsey,’ ” said Tom, smiling shyly. 

“ Mate of de ' Luflly Betsey,’ ” repeated Hans, 
proudly. 

They were now on a broad reach of the Ohio, 
which the French, its discoverers, had called “ la belle 
riviere,” — the beautiful river. Well did it deserve 
its name. Even on this winter day the outlines of 
its shores, though they lacked the green glory of 
the warmer months, were bold and beautiful. 
Sometimes a hut showed on some headland, but for 
miles at a time there was no sign of human habita- 
tion. Deer stared wonderingly from the shore. 
When they were near the bank, they could hear the 
call of the wild turkey. A bear was rifling a honey- 
tree on an island, in fat disregard of the furious 


220 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

swarm of bees about his head and of the human 
enemies so dangerously near. 

“ I shoots him,” said Hans and started for his 
rifle. 

“ No shooting, except on my order,” Tom com- 
manded. “Do you hear that. Smith? And you, 
Juan? And you, Jim?” 

“ Yes, Captain.” 

“ Si, Senor Captain.” 

“ Yes, massa Captain.” 

The response was prompt and hearty. Tom felt 
that he had his crew well in hand. Presently he 
took Juan oflf his oar, put Hans in his place, and 
gave himself an hour’s sleep. 

He was awakened by the sound of stealthy whis- 
pering. He was just about to speak when he heard 
something that made him listen instead. Smith was 
speaking to Juan, who was steering. 

“If you don’t give me half of what you make 
on the nigger. I’ll tell the captain the whole thing.” 

“ Now, Don Carlos, I’ve always treated you fair. 
I got you the chance to come with us. The captain 
was inclined to suspect me a bit, but he hasn’t the 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 221 

least idea we’re old pals. I’m willing to go halves 
with you on the boat and its cargo, when we get 
rid of Strong and the big Dutchman, but Jim’s my 
own private spec. He thinks he’s going to hire out 
at New Orleans. He doesn’t know I’m going to 
swear he’s my slave and get twelve hundred milled 
dollars for him. You’ve no right to come in on 
that.” 

“ I will come in on it. You split even, or we split 
— now.” 

‘‘ It isn’t fair, Don Carlos, but have it your own 
way.” 

“ Then I get half the boat and cargo and half 
what we sell Jim for.” 

Caramha, yes. What’s your plan for getting 
rid of Strong and Rolf? ” 

We’ll get ’em to land a couple of days this 
side of Natchez. Then we’ll put off and leave ’em.” 

“ Suppose they won’t land ? ” 

“ We have knives, haven’t we? Dead men tell no 
tales. But won’t Gayoso seize the boat at Natchez ? ” 

“ General Wilkinson is at Point Pleasant. When 
we stop there to load flour, he is to give me a letter 


222 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

that will pass the ‘ Lovely Betsey ’ all right to Or- 
leans as my boat.” 

Good. We’ll sell everything, including Jim. 
Halves, remember ! ” 

“ Halves it is.” 

The two scoundrels shook hands. Charles Smith, 
or Don Carlos, as Juan called him, crept away. 
Tom lay very still, thinking. So Juan and Smith, 
who had pretended not to know each other, were old 
friends. They had plotted together to come down 
with him, to maroon or kill him and Hans, to steal 
the boat and its cargo. Juan had lured poor old 
Jim to go with him by a promise of good wages. 
With cold-blooded cruelty, he had planned to sell the 
faithful negro into lifelong slavery. And Smith was 
to share in the profits of this crime, too. Certainly 
Tom had plenty to think about. He decided to bide 
his time and to say nothing to Hans and Jim until 
the day of action came. He turned on the mat- 
tress, stretched himself, sat up, and yawned as 
though he had just awakened. 

Day after day the Lovely Betsey ” floated down 
the broad reaches of the beautiful river. Every- 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 223 

thing went well on board. There was no sign of 
the villainy that was hatching. Juan and Smith did 
their work well and cheerfully. They did not draw 
apart from the others. There was no more whis- 
pering. They laughed and sang. Juan produced a 
mandolin and thrummed out sentimental songs of 
love and home. Sometimes it almost seemed to Tom 
that he must have dreamed of that rascally talk, 
but he knew he had been wide awake when he heard 
it. Well, there was no risk until the Mississippi 
was reached. He wanted Juan to get that letter 
from General Wilkinson. He thought he might 
find a use for it himself. So he laughed and talked 
with the two men who meant to maroon or to mur- 
der him, talked as if he had not a care in the world. 
Jim showed a doglike fidelity that touched Tom’s 
heart. He vowed to himself that Jim should be 
saved. 

One afternoon a little town came in sight on the 
Kentucky shore. There were a blockhouse, grist- 
mill, a dozen huts, and a couple of storehouses. It 
was Point Pleasant, the end of the first lap of the 
adventurous journey. The boat was brought to the 


224 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

shore and tied to a tree, while the whole popula- 
tion of the village gathered to welcome the voy- 
agers. Among them was a man of military bearing, 
who was treated with great respect by the simple 
folk around him. Juan pointed him out to Tom. 

'' That is General Wilkinson. He is a friend of 
my father and knows me.” 

'' Everybody can have shore-leave until two hours 
after sunset. I’ll stay on the boat. Tell the store- 
keepers I’ll buy a hundred barrels of flour, at a fair 
price, and some tobacco.” 

There was a chorus of hearty greetings as the 
four men landed. Friendships are made at sight 
on the frontier. Hans’s mighty laugh rang out. 
Jim was chattering with some negroes. Smith was 
evidently known by several of the throng. Juan 
went straight to Wilkinson. 

This was a strange character. James Wilkinson 
was a doctor, when the news of Bunker Hill drew 
him to the American army at the siege of Boston. 
He was Benedict Arnold’s aide-de-camp when Ar- 
nold made his gallant attack upon Canada. He was 
at Saratoga and was commissioned for bravery 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 225 

there a brigadier-general in the Continental Army. 
He would never tell what he did thereafter until he 



GENERAL JAMES WILKINSON 
From a portrait in the State House, Philadelphia, Pa. 


appeared in Kentucky nearly ten years afterwards. 
There he took a prominent part from the first. He 
was active in trying to make Kentucky independent. 


226 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

He listened to Sir Guy Carleton, now Lord Dor- 
chester and in command of Canada, when that 
nobleman suggested that Kentucky should throw in 
her lot again with England and become part of a Can- 
ada that would stretch to the Gulf of Mexico and so 
have an outlet to the sea. He coquetted with Miro, 
who ruled Louisiana from New Orleans and wooed 
Kentucky to become a province of Spain, so that 
the coveted outlet might be hers. He took an oath 
of allegiance to the Spanish King. He was more 
than suspected of being an ally of Aaron Burr, when 
Burr planned to carve an empire for himself out 
of the Mississippi Valley and Texas. He was often 
accused of treason and twice courtmartialed. But he 
was acquitted; he was again made a brigadier- 
general ; he fought well in some minor Indian trou- 
bles and in the War of 1812 with England; and he 
finally vanished southward and died in Mexico in 
1825. How far he went in his allegiance to Spain 
is not known, but it is a suspicious fact that he 
was able to send boats to New Orleans, when no 
other Kentuckian could get by Natchez. 

Tom bought his flour and tobacco that night. The 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 227 

next day it was brought on board. The flour-bar- 
rels were ranged round the sides of the cabin. The 
tobacco was hung from the cabin-roof. The 
“ Lovely Betsey ” turned her blunt nose down- 
stream again. Tom watched Juan narrowly. He 
wished to see where General Wilkinson’s letter was 
carried. He soon located it in the breast-pocket of 
Juan’s buckskin coat. The Spaniard kept patting 
himself there and the crackle of paper was some- 
times heard when he did so. 

Another kind of crackle, the crack of rifle-shots, 
was heard the next day. The “ Betsey ” had just 
swung around a headland when a white man came 
rushing down to the water’s edge, calling for help. 

'‘Steer for the shore; pull hard,” commanded 
Tom. 

“ Beg pardon. Captain,” said Smith, who was off 
duty at the time, “ it’s a common trick of the In- 
dians to make a captive serve as a decoy. If we 
land, we’ll be killed.” 

" We’ll have that man,” Torn answered. " Get 
your own gun and bring out the others.” 

Hans and Juan were at the oars; Jim was steer- 


228 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

ing. A rifle was placed within reach of each. Tom 
and Smith crouched in the square bow of the boat, 
rifles trained on the shore. When they came near, 
the poor wretch who was signaling regained his 
manhood. He was a decoy and his Indian captors 
lay in ambush just above him. He called out : “ In- 
dians ! Keep away ! Indians ! ” Then he whirled 
around, held out his hands, and cried : “ Bear-Who- 
Walks ! Don’t shoot me ! ” A rifle cracked. He 
fell with a bullet through his brain. Jim put the 
great sweep hard-a-port. Hans and Juan dug 
viciously with their oars. Slowly the “ Betsey ” 
gathered way, but the thicket above the dead man 
spurted fire and bullets plowed their way through 
the boat. Tom and Smith were firing as rapidly as 
they could, when there was a yell from Jim. The 
“ Betsey ” yawed about. She was no longer being 
steered. Tom bounded into the cabin and seized 
the sweep. Jim lay there, apparently lifeless, cov- 
ered with flour from a broken barrel, the stave of 
which had been torn off by a bullet. The boat was 
speedily under control and was soon out of danger. 
Tom gave the sweep to Smith and knelt over Jim’s 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 229 

body. To his amazement, the body showed signs 
of life. As a matter of fact, Jim had been only 
stunned, not really hurt at all. As he came to his 
senses, he saw his hands covered with flour, and gave 
a cry of utter joy. 

“ Bress the Lord, bress de Lord, Lse dun turned 
white!” 

They had to undeceive him, but he was consoled 
at finding himself alive after all. In half an hour 
he was at work again. But it had been a narrow 
escape. The bullet had grazed his head, producing 
a temporary paralysis. An eighth of an inch nearer 
would have meant death. When wild horses roamed 
our prairies, a first-class shot would sometimes stun 
and capture them by “ creasing ” them with a bullet. 
Washington Irving’s “ Tour on the Prairies ” tells 
of such a capture. That is a book that every Ameri- 
can boy ought to read. 

Ten days from Pittsburg, they came to the chief 
danger Nature had put in the way of river traffic, — 
the rapids of the Ohio. A canal has long since been 
cut around them, but in the early days it took 
strength and skill to carry an unwieldy boat safely 


230 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

through the rushing waters, safely by the gleaming 
rocks that appeared one minute and disappeared the 
next, in the whirl of the waves. Smith and Juan 
took charge here. They showed both strength and 
skill and did their duty thoroughly well, as they had 
in the skirmish with the Indians. They looked on the 
boat as their own predestined prey and did not mean 
to have man or Nature pluck it from them. They 
took the oars. Hans was steersman. Tom stood 
amidships. Smith called out orders, which Tom 
bellowed back to Hans. It was hard to hear in that 
fury of waters. 

“ Port ! Starboard ! Hard-a-lee ! Starboard, 
quick ! ” 

So the cries rang out. Hans, naked to the waist, 
great knots of muscles standing out on his back and 
arms, put all his gigantic strength into every move- 
ment of the long sweep. All his strength was 
needed. More than once, the “ Betsey ” just 
cleared the jagged edges of a reef that would have 
ripped her to pieces, had she touched it. More 
than once, Tom, peering ahead, thought Smith and 
Juan were taking them all into the very jaws of 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 231 

death, but one peril after another was passed and at 
last the “ Lovely Betsey ” floated into the placid 
waters below the conquered rapids. Everybody 
drew long breaths of relief. Tom congratulated 
the oarsmen on their skill. 

“We wouldn’t have had anything happen to you, 
Captain, for all the world,” said Smith. “ Would 
we, Juan? ” 

“ No, indeed,” answered the lying Spaniard. 
“You’ve done well by us. Captain, and we’re your 
men forever, Don Carlos and I are.” 

“Thank you,” said Tom, but he could not help 
saying it a little dryly. He fancied that Smith 
started at his tone and he saw him look sharply at 
Juan. It would never do to have them suspect 
that he doubted them. He exerted himself to be 
cordial. Saying that they all needed rest, he an- 
chored the boat in midstream, and declared for a 
holiday. An extra good meal was cooked. The 
mandolin was brought out. There was singing and 
talking until bed time. Smith and Juan were bid- 
den to sleep all night, as a reward for their prowess 
that day. Hans and Tom and Jim were to stand 


232 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

watch in turn. There was not much danger of In- 
dians attacking them in canoes, but such things had 
sometimes happened. Tom did not mean to be 
taken unawares. His own watch passed without 
incident. So did Hans’s. The chance was given 
to Jim to show that a brave heart can beat under 
a black skin. 

It was that darkest hour just before dawn. Jim 
had been patrolling back and forth, peering through 
the darkness, seeing nothing and hearing nothing 
except the soft swish of the current against the 
square bow. He walked back to the cabin, laid 
down his gun, and picked up an ax to split some 
wood for the breakfast fire. He felt rather than 
saw that some one was near him. He turned to see 
an Indian close upon him, and another climbing 
over the bow. With a mighty yell of “ Injuns ! ” 
that brought his four comrades instantly to their 
feet, he buried his ax in the intruder’s head. The 
man fell like a log, his tomahawk clattering upon 
the deck. Jim seized the tomahawk and dashed at 
the second Indian, who was now hastily clambering 
up the front of the boat. As the four white men 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 233 

rushed out of the cabin, they saw in the dim light 
of the coming dawn the Indian rise to his feet and 
draw back his tomahawk. They saw Jim jump 
straight at him. They saw the two clinch, sway, 
and fall forward into the river. There was a crash, 
some savage yells, and silence — then the sound of 
swift swimming. The negro and the Indian had 
fallen together on a canoe with half a dozen sav- 
ages in it and overturned it. Here and there a 
head showed above the water. The whites were 
afraid to fire, lest they should kill the brave negro. 
A hoarse whisper reassured them. 

‘‘ Tse hyar, Massa, a-clingin’ to de anchor- 
rope.” 

Jim’s black head bobbed up close to the boat. A 
merciless fire was opened on the swimmers. They 
dived often and the darkness favored them, but the 
body of the savage Jim had killed was not the only 
one that floated down the Ohio that morning. The 
gallant darky was hauled aboard. He still held 
the tomahawk he had captured. 

‘‘ I wuz pow’ful fri’tened, massa Captain,” he 
explained, but I shuah dun my bestest.” 


234 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

“ You saved all our lives, Jim,” answered Tom. 

There isn’t one of us that doesn’t owe his life to 
you.” 

“ And this is the man,” he thought, “ that those 
two scoundrels are plotting to sell into slavery; most 
surely Hans and I will save him.” He ordered the 
anchor pulled aboard. The boat was turned down- 
stream, the dead Indian was flung overboard, the 
bloodstains washed out, and the rude breakfast 
cooked. Hans and Smith bent to the oars as if 
anxious to escape from the spot marked by such a 
tragedy. This was their last Indian skirmish. 
Next day they were within the zone of the old 
French villages in what is now southern Illinois. 
Neither the French nor the Spanish ever had any 
real Indian troubles, while every mile of American 
progress to the West was marked with war. The 
chief reason for this difference is that the French 
and Spanish settlements were made under the direc- 
tion of their governments, on a small scale, and after 
treaties with the Indians. Moreover, these treaties 
were kept. Our settlements were made by indi- 
viduals or by colonization companies that grabbed 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 235 

great stretches of Indian land for a few guns, some 
gaudy handkerchiefs, or a lot of cheap beads. 
When our Government made treaties, it usually 
broke them. If it did not, its citizens did. The 
Frenchman tilled a few acres and made friends with 
his savage neighbors. The pioneer would have no 
savage neighbors. He drove them away. There was 
truth in the complaint of the Cherokees : 

We are driven as it were into the sea. We 
have hardly land sufficient to stand upon. We are 
neither fish nor birds. We cannot live in the water 
nor in the air.” 

Half a century later, in 1838, when James Rus- 
sell Lowell graduated from Harvard, his class poem, 
which he could not deliver because he was rusticated, 
said : 

“ Can ye not hear where on the Southern breeze 
Swells the last wailing of the Cherokees? 

‘ We must go, for already more near and more near 
The tramp of the paleface falls thick on the ear.’ ” 

It was almost half a century later still, before we 
began to treat the Cherokees justly. If you would 
know part of the long story of Indian wrongs, read 


236 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

‘‘ A Century of Dishonor,” by Helen Hunt Jackson 
(H. H.). 

However, all danger from Indians ceased for our 
party before the “ Lovely Betsey ” floated from the 
Ohio, the beautiful river, into the Father-of-Waters, 
the Mississippi, the majestic river. The danger 
from the Spaniard was still to be met. So was the 
more deadly danger from within, the danger from 
Smith and Juan. Natchez was but three days away. 
Tom decided that the time for action had come. 
He took Hans aside, swore him to secrecy, told him 
of the treachery of their two comrades, and with 
some difficulty kept him from knocking them sense- 
less, then and there. When he explained to Hans 
what he intended to do, the giant was delighted. 
Nothing was said to Jim, for fear of his being un- 
able to keep the secret. Tom knew Jim would fol- 
low him to the death, if need be. 

The next morning, bright and early, the Lovely 
Betsey ” piled herself upon a sandbar in the middle 
of the river. She had to be dug off. Hans’s spade 
struck something that was not sand. It turned out 
to be a bit of sheet-lead. There were almost illegible 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 237 

markings upon it. Tom’s young eyes finally made 
them out. They were : 

ANDO 

OTO 

Below the OTO was a half oval, with some design 
scratched within it of which no one could make head 
or tail. They had all gathered about the queer find 
and were eagerly discussing it. Juan suggested that 
he had seen in New Orleans the armorial bearings 
of the Grandees who ruled Louisiana hung upon the 
outer walls of the Palacio de Gobernacion, — the 
Government Palace,— and that the marks which 
puzzled them might be the right-hand half of some 
coat-of-arms. This suggestion was accepted, in de- 
fault of a better. The relic was taken aboard be- 
fore the “ Lovely Betsey ” was pried off into deep 
water. It still meant nothing to them, for they did 
not know the history of the discovery of the Miss- 
issippi, but it might have meant a great deal to 
wiser men, if it had ever reached civilization. It 
may have been part of the burial-wrappings of Her- 
nando de Soto, the gallant Spaniard who first of all 
white men saw the Mississippi. He discovered it 


238 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

in 1541, seventy-nine years before the Pilgrims 
landed at Plymouth, sixty-eight years before Hen- 
drik Hudson sailed past Manhattan Island. 

Hernando de Soto had grown rich with Pizarro 
in Peru. He returned to Spain and asked leave to 



HERNANDO DE SOTO 


conquer Florida, at his own expense, for the King. 
The flattered monarch made him Governor of Cuba 
and of all the countries he should subdue. In 1539, 
he sailed from Spain, with six hundred volunteers, 
all “ in the bloom of life.” He was to lead most of 
them to death. Leaving his wife to govern Cuba, he 
left Havana with a thousand men, of whom three 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 239 

hundred were horsemen. The little army landed at 
Tampa Bay. The ships were sent back, as Cortez 
had sent back from Mexico the ships he did not 
burn. The long march began. There was great 
store of provisions. There was a mighty drove of 
pigs, to furnish fresh food on the way. There were 
cards, for “ leisure time in gaming.” There were a 
dozen priests, that “ the festivals of the Church 
might be kept.” There were chains for the In- 
dians to be captured. There were bloodhounds to 
track them. Some Florida Indians were impressed 
as guides and bidden to lead the Spaniards to the 
gold that was their god. One simple fellow said 
he did not know where gold was to be found. He 
was promptly burned at the stake, as a lesson to the 
others. They led the Spaniards northward, per- 
haps because they had heard of the petty gold mines 
of North Carolina. Then they turned westward. 
At Mobile, they burned an Indian town. The flames 
spread to their own luggage and consumed most of 
it. They wintered drearily in northern Mississippi. 
By this time the gay cavalcade was no longer gay. 
It had been “ brilliant in silks and glittering armor.” 


240 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Now it was fain to cover its nakedness with skins 
and mats woven of ivy. The simple Indians brought 
De Soto their lame and blind that he might touch 
them and so make them walk and see. Instead he 
made the able-bodied his slaves. Weary of wan- 
dering, sick at heart, he died on the banks of the 
great river in 1541. 

It is recorded that when he was laid to rest, his 
body was wrapped in a leaden sheet, upon which his 
name and his coat-of-arms were graven. Then the 
wooden coffin, weighted with stones, was lowered 
into the river he had discovered, to the end that the 
Indians should not find and desecrate his grave. It 
is possible that Hans found a part of De Soto’s 
leaden winding-sheet. We shall see what became 
of it. 

That night, when they were floating without oars 
down the stream, Smith began talking of the good 
hunting to be had on shore. 

“ Why not stop to-morrow and shoot a bit. Cap- 
tain? If you’re as tired of salt meat and fresh fish 
as I am, you’ll be glad of a change. I know a point 
down below, just about where we’ll be by sunrise. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 241 

The high land comes down to the river. There’s an 
old Indian trail that goes back into the country and 
swings around to Natchez. If you and Rolf went 
inland for a while you could get plenty of wild tur- 
key and perhaps a deer or a bear. They’d taste 
good, wouldn’t they? Juan and Jim and I could 
clean ship while you’re gone, so the ‘ Lovely 
Betsey ’ would make a good show for herself, when 
we round the bend into Natchez.” 

That seems a good idea,” Tom replied. “ By 
the way, when ought we to reach Natchez? ” 

“ About sun-up, day after to-morrow.” 

“ How long does it take to get there by the trail 
you mentioned ? ” 

“ A good four days. It winds around a lot.” 

“ Well, we will make the landing. You and Juan 
can take the oars in the morning, and put us into 
the high point when you see it. Hans and I would 
like some shooting, wouldn’t we, Hans ? ” 

‘‘ Yah, if ve shoots at de right ding.” 

‘‘ You’ll find the right thing to aim at, Rolf,” said 
Smith. 

“ I bets ve do,” replied Hans. 


242 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

He was to stand the second watch that night and 
Tom the third. When Tom came to relieve him, 
they went over their plan for the morning, in low 
tones. 

“ I vish you lets me kill dem both,” pleaded Hans. 

“ No,” said Tom. “ They are not to be killed, 
but they’ll be a pair of footsore scoundrels before 
they ever reach Natchez. When I cover Juan and 
say, ‘ Hands up ! ’ you cover Smith and make him 
put his up, too.” 

“ I knocks him down pretty quick alretty,” an- 
swered Hans, if he don’t put dem up. I guess 
he vill, ven he sees my gun.” 


CHAPTER X 


JT was a lovely morning, a day of peace and sun- 
shine, by no means fit for the “ treasons, 
stratagems, and spoils ” the two scoundrels had in 
mind, as they pulled the “ Betsey athwart the 
current and brought her up to a point of land, 
crowned with live-oaks, that thrust itself far into 
the river. They were at the oars, Jim at the rudder- 
sweep. 

“ Here we are. Captain,” shouted Smith, as the 
bow slid up the sandy shore. “ Shall I fasten her? ” 

“ All right.” 

He jumped upon the bank, took a turn of a rope 
around a big tree, made fast, and climbed back into 
the boat as Tom and Hans came out of the cabin, 
rifles in hand, apparently ready to go ashore to 
hunt. Smith and Juan were full of secret, unholy 
glee. They felt sure of the success of their wicked 
plan. Tom and Hans would go inland; the con- 
spirators would start down-stream with the boat, 
243 


244 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

telling Jim the hunters were going to Natchez by 
land. General Wilkinson’s letter, which nestled so 
securely in Juan’s breast-pocket, would get them 
safely by Natchez. At New Orleans, they would 
sell boat and cargo and divide the spoils. Part of 
the cargo sold would be Jim. He had served them 
faithfully. He had saved their lives when the In- 
dians crept aboard the boat. He had a right to be 
free. All that mattered nothing to them. They 
could get twelve hundred milled Spanish dollars for 
Jim. That fact settled his fate in their eyes. They 
were in most excellent good humor with themselves 
and with the future as they imagined it was going 
to be. That future suddenly changed. 

Hands up! ” said Tom, and covered Juan with 
his rifle. 

Hans bup ! ” shouted Hans as his rifle covered 
Smith. 

The four hands went up. Juan, cowed by a long- 
forgotten conscience, cowered, but Smith tried 
to bluff. He laughed, though uneasily, and 
asked : 


What’s the joke?” 


• Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 245 

“ There is no joke,” answered Tom. “ Jim, come 
here. Tie up Juan.” 

Jim, who was staring open-eyed at the scene, 
stumbled forward. 

“ You mean it, massa Captain? You mean it? ” 

“ Yes, I mean it. Tie him up. Put that rope on 
him!” 

As Jim advanced with the rope, Hans turned to 
see what was going on. Smith instantly dashed at 
him, but Hans, dropping his gun, met the attack 
with a swinging blow, straight from the shoulder. 
Smith went down and out. When he came to his 
senses, he was in a mesh of rope. Juan had already 
been bound, hand and foot. The two scamps lay on 
the deck, trussed like pigs. 

Now I will tell you,” said Tom, why you have 
been treated in this fashion and what is going to be 
done with you. You two, who pretended never to 
have met before you came together on this boat, are 
old friends. You conspired together to take the 
trip, to leave Hans and me on the shore or to kill 
us, to steal the boat and her cargo, to sell them as 
your own, and to divide the plunder. More than 


246 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

this, you conspired to sell poor Jim into slavery in 
Louisiana.” 

“ No, massa Captain, Juan he tole me I wuz 
goin’ to get good wages. I ain’t no slave, massa. 
I’se free.” 

Jim’s interruption was brief. Tom went on. 

“ I overheard your wicked plot the first night out 
from Pittsburg. I have known it ever since. What 
have you to say for yourselves?” 

“ I have to say that you’re dreaming. Captain,” 
Smith replied. “ We never thought of doing the 
things you say. Did we, Juan ? ” 

“ No, never, never,” said Juan. 

“ Why did you, Juan, get a letter from General 
Wilkinson, telling Gayoso to pass you and your 
boat down to New Orleans? ” 

“ I never did.” 

‘‘The letter is in your breast-pocket. I shall 
take it out and read it presently.” 

Juan’s sallow face turned a green white. 

“ You shan’t read anything of mine,” he pro- 
tested. “ If I got a letter from the General, it was 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 247 

just to make things easy for you, if Gayoso tried to 
interfere with you. It was kindness to you, that’s 
what it was.” 

“ We’ll see,” said Tom, and began to search the 
Spaniard, who shrieked curses at him during the 
process. It revealed a good deal. There were two 
letters from Wilkinson to Gayoso in Juan’s breast- 
pocket. Tom read them both aloud. The first said 
that the bearer was a friend of the writer and was 
to be allowed to take his boat to New Orleans, 
“ under my arrangement with Governor-General 
Miro.” The second went more into detail. It 
said : 

“ Your and my good friend, the young Senor 
Juan Gregorio, is taking his boat, the ‘ Lovely 
Betsey,’ to New Orleans. Please permit her and her 
cargo to pass untouched. He has with him his and 
our friend, Don Carlos Smith, who will give you 
news of the loyalty of some of us to His Most 
Christian Majesty, the King of Spain. He takes 
also a negro named Jim, who is for sale. Perhaps 
Your Excellency may like to buy him. Don Juan 


248 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

tells me Jim is well worth twelve hundred Spanish 
dollars. I am, Sehor Commandante, 

‘‘ Your affectionate and assured servant, 

‘‘ James Wilkinson.” 

What have you to say now? ” asked Tom. 

“ Did that writin’ say fer shuah, massa Captain, 
dat I wuz to be sold ? — sold into slavery ? ” cried 
Jim. 

‘‘ Yes, it said so.” 

‘‘ You won’t let him sell me, massa, you won’t let 
him, will you?” 

Jim crouched before Tom in abject terror. 

“ You will not be sold. You will stay free. You 
will go home with me. Stop ! Stop, I say ! ” 

Jim had fallen flat on his face and was kissing 
Tom’s boots. 

You’ve dun sabed me, massa Captain. Glory to 
God, I’se sabed ! ” 

Here Smith began to speak. He had had time 
to collect his wits and had decided that his own 
best chance was to cut loose from Juan. 

“ Captain, I don’t wonder you suspected me, see- 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 249 

ing me going so much with Juan, but I never 
imagined he was a bad boy. Tve been in no plot. 
Now ril tell you ” 

Ah, caramba/' shrieked the Spaniard, “ you 
will tell, will you? You never plotted with me? 
You’ll try to save your neck by wringing mine, will 
you? Captain, he made me sign a contract with 
him. He wouldn’t take my word, the word of a 
hidalgo. He has it on him, now. Find it and read 
it. Ah ! ha ! ” He yelled with demoniac laughter. 
“ Look at him ! Look at the good Don Carlos, who 
didn’t know I was a bad boy ! Look at him ! ” 
Don Carlos was not a pleasant person to look 
at just them. He was glaring at Juan with the 
kind of hate that longs to kill. He kept a sullen 
silence when Tom asked him whether he had such 
a contract upon him. It was speedily found. It 
ran like this : 

Strong and Rolf are to be got rid of. Boat and 
cargo are to be sold. Also Jim. Half receipts 
boat, cargo, and Jim, go to each of us. 

Carlos Smith. 

Juan Gregorio.” 


2^0 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

It was dated the day Jim had saved their lives. 

The case against the conspirators was now com- 
plete. Neither of them made any further pretense 
to innocence. They awaited stolidly their fate, 
without much hope that it would be anything but 
death. They knew what vengeance they would have 
taken, had the positions been reversed. Their judge 
pronounced sentence. 

Your guns and ammunition and knives we will 
keep. Your personal belongings will be put on 
shore, with four days’ provisions. You will be 
turned loose to walk to Natchez. Perhaps I ought 
to put you to death. You were ready to put Rolf 
and me to death, and to put poor old Jim into 
slavery, a thing worse than death. But you shall go 
free.” 

After a further thorough search of their clothes 
and of their scanty luggage, the judgment was car- 
ried out. The bags and some provisions were put 
on shore. The two criminals were untied and 
thrust off the boat upon the bank with rifle-muzzles 
in their backs. With Tom and Hans still covering 
them with guns, Jim untied the rope, pushed off 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 251 

the boat, and sprang into it. The swift current 
caught it. Tom ran back to the sweep and headed 
the bow down-stream. The “ Lovely Betsey ” swept 
peacefully southward. Two baffled scoundrels on 
shore glared, now at the boat, now at each other. 

Twenty-four hours later a patrol boat from 
Natchez hailed the “ Betsey and took her in tow. 
Tom exhibited Wilkinson’s formal letter to Gayoso. 
The captain of the patrol read it. He knew some 
English, luckily for the three people on the “ Bet- 
sey,” who did not have a word of Spanish between 
them. He said, however, nothing could go below 
Natchez without a special order from Gayoso. So 
the “ Betsey ” was tied up to the shore at the little 
town. When Tom and the Spanish captain had 
climbed the steep bank, under the guns of an eight- 
sided fort, they found themselves in the village 
square, the center of the dull life of the fifteen hun- 
dred people who lived there. On the Ohio, an 
American town of fifteen hundred would have been 
a busy scene. On the Mississippi, the Spanish set- 
tlement was as still as if nothing ever had happened 
or ever would happen there. The Palace of Gov- 


2^2 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

eminent ” was a small, shabby, two-story wooden 
house just north of the town. Thither Tom was 
taken. A sentry sat on the steps, his uniform in 
rags, his rusty gun a relic. He waved his hand 
languidly, when asked for the Governor. 

Pass, friends.” 

They passed up the rotting stairway and were 
received by the Governor’s secretary, who thought 
his chief might see them soon.” Then they waited 
an hour. Then they waited another. Finally they 
were ushered into the presence of the local po- 
tentate. Tom presented to him Wilkinson’s first 
letter. He read it, thought a moment, and said : 

“ My secretary will give you clearance-papers.” 

“ When may I have them ? ” 

“ I think he can find time to attend to it to-morrow 
morning.” 

‘‘ But I wish to start for New Orleans before 
noon to-day.” 

“ Quite impossible. We are busy to-day, are 
we not, Don Jose?” 

“ Very busy. Your Excellency.” 

‘‘ You hear, Sehor Captain. Pray withdraw now. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 253 

that we may attend to pressing affairs. I bid you 
farewell until to-morrow. Pray give me a cigar- 
ette, Don Jose.” 

Tom was delighted with the success of his ruse to 
get by Natchez, but he did not fancy being held up 
for twenty-four hours. As he went out, he asked the 
secretary whether he would not take dinner with 
him at one o’clock on the Betsey.” Don Jose 
would be delighted to do so. 

‘‘If you should happen to bring with you the 
clearance-papers,” suggested Tom, “ I would try 
to show you how deeply an American would appre- 
ciate such courtesy from a hidalgo.” 

“ Ah,” said Don Jose, “ you have things to sell on 
your boat ? ” 

“ And things to give to real friends.” 

“ Perhaps, after all, the Governor will have time 
to sign the clearance papers this morning. I will 
see what I can do.” 

“ Don Jose ! ” It was the Governor who called. 

“ Your Excellency! ” 

“ Let the American return here for a moment. 
You and the patrol-captain may retire.” 


254 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

So Tom was ushered in again and left alone 
with Gayoso. The Governor came straight to the 
point. 

‘‘ What is your cargo? ” 

‘‘ Pots, pans, axes and plows, flour and tobacco.” 

“ There is some scarcity of flour and tobacco 
here.” 

May I have the pleasure of presenting Your 
Excellency with five barrels of flour?” 

‘‘ With ten — you said ten, did you not ?^ — barrels 
of flour ? Since you insist, you may. And I suppose 
you could spare a half hundred-weight of tobacco.” 

“If Your Excellency insists.” 

“ Insist? I? Oh, no, but the things I have men- 
tioned would be useful. Then, say, half a dozen 
axes and two plows.” 

“ I suppose it would be possible to let me sail at 
once.” 

“ Certainly it would, when you show such a 
proper spirit. Don Jose!” The secretary entered. 
“ I will put aside our pressing affairs of State and 
sign the clearance-papers of our American friend. 
He insists upon leaving with me these things.” He 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 255 

handed the secretary a list of the contributions he 
had wrung from Tom. Don Jose read it aloud. 

“ Fifteen barrels of flour.” 

Ten,” interrupted Tom. 

“Fifteen; I am sure you said fifteen,” said the 
Governor suavely. 

“ A hundred-weight of tobacco.” 

“ Half a hundred-weight.” 

“ I remember distinctly you said a hundred- 
weight.” 

“ A dozen axes and three plows.” 

It was useless to protest. Tom turned to go back 
to the “ Betsey.” 

“ Wait just a moment,” said Don Jose. 

Meanwhile Hans had been wandering about the 
small town. There was little to see. The sun- 
baked public square, with never a tree or a blade 
of grass, was not attractive. There were but two 
public buildings, the town-hall and nearby the jail. 
Both were built of logs. Both were one-story. The 
jail was one room. Both had piazzas facing the 
square. Both had back doors opening toward the 


2^6 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

river. A lazy soldier mounted guard at each. 
Mounting guard at Natchez meant sitting in the 
shade of the piazza, with gun laid aside, with no 
occupation save that of rolling and smoking end- 
less cigarettes. Hans sat down on the jail-piazza 
and tried to talk to the sentry, but the latter had no 
English or German. He had, however, the courtesy 
of his race. He made Hans feel welcome. He 
grinned amiably at him. He became demonstrative 
when Hans gave him some tobacco. He gave Hans 
the Spanish ahrazo (embrace), which consists in 
throwing your arms about your friend and patting 
him on the back. At this Hans gave a roar of good- 
natured laughter. When he laughed, some one 
stirred uneasily upon straw within the jail. Then 
some one spoke feverish, unmeaning words — in 
English. Hans started. The faint voice sounded 
half- familiar. Had he ever heard it? .What did 
those ravings in English mean ? The sentry 
scowled, shrugged his shoulders, got up, leaving his 
gun on the piazza, and strolled into the windowless 
room, lit only by the two open doors, at front and 
back. Through the latter, Hans, as he followed 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 257 

the soldier, saw the “ Lovely Betsey ” tied up to 
the bank. Jim was taking a sun-bath on the cabin- 
roof. 

The jail held but one prisoner. He lay on a mass 
of filthy straw, himself a mass of rags. There 
was an iron collar about his neck, fastened with pad- 
lock and chain to a staple in the wall. Handcuffs 
were on his wrists. Shackles bound his ankles. He 
lay there, but half conscious of his suffering, for a 
friendly fever was doing its best to free him from 
his body. He stared straight at Hans with unsee- 
ing eyes. He muttered : 

“Mother Strong! Mother Strong!” 

The prisoner was Zed Pratt. 

The soldier shambled up to the helpless man, 
shook his fist at him, and kicked him in the side. 
Before Zed could moan, the Spaniard could only 
gurgle. Hans, beside himself with righteous wrath, 
had clutched him by the throat. He choked him into 
unconsciousness. Zed was too far gone to know 
what was going on. There were great goings-on. 
With a key found in the soldier’s pocket, iron collar 
and handcuffs and shackles fell from the trapper’s 


258 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

weary body. The soldier was stripped, gagged with 
some of Zed’s rags, put in irons, and left covered 
with the filthy straw where Zed had lain. His 
ragged uniform was now adorning the trapper. 
Hans bent over his friend, tears rolling down his 
face. 

“ Zed ! You knows me. You knows Hans. You 
cornin’ mit me. Come ! ” 

Hans raised him to his feet. He could scarcely 
stand. Alone, he could not have walked a step. 
He did not recognize Hans. He did not know what 
was happening. But he dimly realized that he was 
being helped. He clung to the giant. Together 
they stumbled out of the back door and started to 
climb down the bank. The chances of discovery 
were a hundred to one against them, but the one 
chance proved good. It was high noon. The hot 
southern sun beat upon the bank. No one had ven- 
tured beyond the shade that roofs and piazzas gave. 
No one saw them. Half-walking, half-carried. Zed 
reached the “ Lovely Betsey ” in Hans’s arms. With 
Jim’s eager help, he was carried into the cabin. 
The tell-tale uniform was taken off him. He was 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 259 

laid on the mattress in a dark corner. Tobacco- 
leaves, hastily plucked from where they swung be- 
low the cabin-roof, were piled over him, hiding all 
of him but his face. A sense of peace, stole over 
him. His clouded brain cleared a little. His daunt- 
less spirit had never been broken. He did not yet 
remember Hans, but he knew he was a friend. He 
faintly smiled. Hans bent over him, saying : 

‘‘ Zed, go sleep. Stay still, very still. There’s 
danger, but Tom’s cornin’.” 

‘‘Tom?” whispered the old trapper, “my boy 
Tom?” 

“ Yes, Tom. I’m Hans. Tom’s cornin’.” 

The wonderful news was too much for the worn- 
out man. He could speak not a word more. He lay 
still, with a smile on his brave lips. Then Hans 
and Jim put a basket upside down over the old trap- 
per’s face and covered the basket with more tobacco- 
leaves. Zed could breathe, and could not be seen. 

Hans heard voices outside. As he came out of 
the cabin, Tom and Don Jose came down the bank 
together. The secretary had kept the boy-captain 


260 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

waiting barely ten minutes and had brought the 
clearance-papers, duly signed. There was no chance 
for a whispered word now between Tom and Hans. 
The former could not yet be told what priceless 
freight the “ Lovely Betsey ” held. He had the 
Governor’s plunder unloaded. He found that Don 
Jose expected an ax and a barrel of flour for himself. 
Don Jose received them. He called loudly and three 
or four men began to straggle down the bank to carry 
away the spoils. Then Don Jose himself turned 
and entered the cabin. Hans’s heart stood still. 
He felt that he simply could not bear to have Zed 
discovered now. To his simple mind there came 
the thought of a card to play. He knew that yellow 
fever was the scourge of the Spaniard on the shores 
of the Gulf of Mexico. At Vera Cruz always, at 
Havana often, at New Orleans sometimes, the yel- 
low peril killed. When New Orleans was infected, 
the dread disease was apt to creep up the Mississ- 
ippi, taking its toll of lives at every tiny town. The 
Spaniards called it el vomito” They were afraid 
of very few things, but ''el vomito '' was the chief- 
est of these. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 261 

Don Jose was complimenting Tom upon the 
amount of freight the ‘‘ Lovely Betsey ” could carry. 
He took a step towards the heap of tobacco-leaves 
where Zed lay hidden. 

“ Truly, my friend,” he said, with all these 
leaves hanging and with all these piled here, you 
could spare me an armful from this heap, could you 
not?” 

“ They are yours, Don Jose,” answered Tom, 
striving mightily to conceal his disgust. ‘‘ Take 
what you will.” 

“ Come here, Miguel,” commanded Don Jose, 
and pick up these leaves for me.” 

Miguel clambered from the bank to the 
boat. 

Then Hans, whose lightest step was heavy enough 
to shake the whole craft, came stumbling heavily 
into the cabin and flung himself, groaning, between 
Don Jose and the heap of tobacco. 

Fm sick. Captain,” he said; '‘very sick. Fm 
afraid Fve the yellow fever.” 


voniito!'' shrieked Don Jose. 


262 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

El vomito! ” yelled Miguel. 

They fled in utter terror. The men on the bank 
ran too. The Governor’s plunder was left un- 
touched and unguarded. 

“ I ain’t sick, Captain. Not a bit. Get away, 
quick ! This minute ! ” 

Hans had scarcely spoken, when Don Jose 
shouted, from a safe distance: 

“ Go away! The fort will fire on you, if you do 
not leave instantly ! ” 

There was no thought of Don Jose staying to 
dinner now. There was no chance of his discover- 
ing Zed now. The Lovely Betsey ” was hastily 
cast off. By one o’clock, she was some miles south 
of Natchez. As Washington had said he would, 
Tom had learned something. He had learned that 
the Spaniard took heavy toll, even when he let a 
boat go by. He doubted, however, whether that 
knowledge was worth the flour, tobacco, axes, and 
plows it had cost. 

And now he learned something more. Hans told 
him the marvelous story of the finding and rescue of 
Zed. He could not believe it until the tobacco- 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 263 

leaves were put aside, the upturned basket lifted, 
and he saw with his own eyes Zed lying there wasted 
and worn, but sound asleep and smiling in his sleep. 
Tom sat beside him a moment. Happy tears filled 
his eyes. 

“ God bless you, Hans, dear friend.” 

Then they took to their oars and rowed 
mightily. 

That night they ran upon a sandbar. The river 
was falling, for the sun had not yet melted on the 
Rocky Mountains the snow that was later to pour a 
yellow flood down the Mississippi into the Gulf. 
It took them flve days to get off. 

With the first morning consciousness came back 
to Zed, for a while. He was too weak to tell any- 
thing about himself, or to be told anything about 
them. He knew he was with them, safe, no longer 
in rags and chains, but tended with loving care. 
When they were not toiling to float the boat, they 
sat by him. He scarcely spoke. At least he spoke 
few words. His eyes said many things. But most 
of the time he lay still, half-conscious. 

The five days’ delay came near costing them dear. 


264 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

The “ Lovely Betsey ” was scarcely afloat when a 
patrol-boat, built for speed and manned by four 
stout oarsmen, rushed around a point just above 
them. The patrol-captain and Smith and Juan, 
crouching in the bow with rifles in their hands, 
opened fire the moment they were within range. 
There was no hail, no parley before the attack. 
Smith and Juan had stumbled, footsore, into 
Natchez; had told Gayoso (already fiercely angry 
over the jail-delivery) how he had been duped; had 
offered him half of everything in the boat, including 
Jim, in return for help from him; and had been 
given command of a patrol-boat and its crew. Jim 
kept at the rudder-sweep of the “ Betsey.” It would 
have been fatal to run aground then. Zed lay help- 
less. Tom and Hans sprang to the cabin portholes 
and fired again and again. Still the boat rushed 
towards them. In another minute the “ Betsey ” 
would have been boarded. But this was not to be. 
A big snag lay just beneath the surface. The patrol- 
boat, urged on by eight stout arms, struck it full and 
square. The boat crumpled into splinters. Oars- 
men and riflemen were thrown in a heap into the 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 265 

turbid water, caught in a fierce whirlpool, sucked 
down to death. Not a single one came to the sur- 
face. It was a horrible sight, but it spelled safety 
to Tom and Zed and Hans and Jim. 

Dose gemmen won’t neber sell me into slabery 
now,” said Jim. 

Hans’s bullet-pouch was nearly empty. So was 
Tom’s. Jim said he could make bullets from some 
old lead he had, and was bidden to go ahead. And 
that is why no antiquarian ever studied Hernando 
de Soto’s leaden winding-sheet. That night, when 
the “ Betsey ” was anchored and Tom and Hans 
were sound asleep, the old negro melted all they had 
of it into bullets, which he proudly exhibited in 
the morning. 

“ There’s no use crying over spilt lead,” said Tom. 
While he had no idea of the possible value of what 
Hans had found, he had intended to take it home 
with him and show it to some learned person, per- 
haps to Alexander Hamilton, perhaps to a pro- 
fessor in the Columbia College, which had been 
King’s College a few years before. Now that it was 
gone, he forbore to tell Jim he had wished to keep 


266 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

it. Why shadow the pride of nice old Jim in his nice 
new bullets ? 

Bit by bit, Zed came back to life. The wasted 
cheeks filled out. The old fire came into his eyes. 
He could move about, but as yet he could handle 
neither oar nor gun. They told him their story, by 
degrees. At last the day came when he could tell 
them his. This is what had happened to Zed. 

He had run infinite risks with infinite care. His 
carefulness had carried him and his canoe in safety 
to Lake Superior. So far, he had dodged Indians 
and English soldiers and the French voyageurs and 
the Scotch trappers of the dreaded Hudson’s Bay 
Company, — The Company ” it was called from the 
St. Lawrence to the Columbia. Across a continent, it 
was lord of life and death. It made men in London 
rich with its furs. It killed whatever men in 
America tried to take furs without its permission 
within its preserves or ventured to spy out the 
mighty land it ruled. 

It was Zed’s habit to paddle by night, to sleep by 
day. One night when the sky was dark with storm- 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 267 

clouds, his canoe was creeping across a great bay 
on the northern shore of Superior. A sudden hur- 
ricane snapped the paddle in his hand and drove 
him far out into the inland sea. Day broke upon 
his helplessness. His tossing canoe was sighted by 
a Hudson Bay Company’s bateau. The French had 
lost Canada, but a big boat was still called a bateau. 
It bore down upon him. He was taken on board. 
His canoe was towed astern. His pretense of being 
one of “the Company’s” men was riddled by the 
keen questions of the Scotchman in command. His 
belongings were seized. He was placed under guard. 
Two days afterwards he was landed at the Com- 
pany’s post at the head of the Lake. His trial be- 
gan forthwith. Short shrift was given him. 

“ The old factor,” said Zed, “ sat at one end of a 
long table in his house inside the fort. They call 
their chiefs ‘ factors.’ He was a big, upstandin’ 
man, with a face red as brandy could make it and a 
hand like a ham. He talked gentlelike, but he did- 
n’t look thataway one bit. There was a lot o’ men 
’round him, all sorts o’ men, Scotchmen, English, 
half-breeds, French, but they all acted as if they 


268 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

belonged to him, and he just sat there and played 
king. After he’d asked me some questions and I 
hadn’t answered ’em, he smiled — I hope I’ll never 
see anybody smile thataway again — and said : ‘ Ye’ll 
be sent back to Detroit. Ye can git home from 
there. James, ye take him on your bateau to- 
morrow. The furs’ll be put on it at the Two-Mile 
Point.’ ‘ Yes, sir,’ sez this man James. He was a 
pretty nice-lookin’ man, but just then he looked as 
if he was seein’ a ghost. And he gave a kind of 
shiver. I knew mighty well what the old factor 
meant. I was to be taken out o’ earshot of the fort 
and quietly shot. But o’ course I didn’t let on that 
I knew. I hadn’t bin shot yit and p’r’aps I could get 
out of it. ’Tenny rate, I meant to try.” 

He was at once relieved of arrest. The fort was 
free to him. His goods were restored to him. That 
afternoon he was invited to join in sundry sports. 
In a shooting-match he won a beaver-skin. At night 
he supped with the factor, by special invitation. It 
was an honor few of the others shared. The half- 
dozen men at the rude feast made much of him. It 
was a wild carouse for all but the temperate trap- 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 269 

per. The evening ended with everybody singing 
Auld Lang Syne.” They stood in a circle, hand 
in hand with the man they knew was to be murdered 
on the morrow. 

“ Good-night, Pratt,” said the factor. ‘‘ You’ll 
be off early i’ the morn. Bon voyage, as these 
French fellows say.” 

Thank ye for all your kindness to me,” said 
Zed, sturdily. “ Good-night.” 

He slept on priceless furs that night. At day- 
break he was called. He breakfasted with James, 
eating heartily himself, rallying his host on his lack 
of appetite. 

I tell ye, Tom,” he exclaimed, “ I just knew I 
was goi'n’ to git out of it.” 

While they were breakfasting James told an In- 
dian to take Mr. Pratt’s gun and stores to the 
bateau. Protest would have been useless. He had 
to submit to being thus disarmed. Then they 
started on foot for Two-Mile Point, so named for 
its distance from the fort. There were half a dozen 
in the party, all white men. Evidently there was to 
be no Indian witness of the killing of the American. 


270 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

The woodland path led southward. Its narrowness 
made them walk in Indian file. Zed was fifth in the 
line. James brought up the rear. The Englishman 
was sick at heart over the murder he had been or- 
dered to commit. He had learned “ Thou shalt not 
kill ” at his mother’s knee in the nursery of a 
stately home in Devonshire. His wild life in 
America had not marred his memory or stifled his 
conscience. Born a gentleman, he had stayed one. 
Zed had read James aright. Suddenly he turned 
to him and whispered : 

“ Are ye that factor’s slave that ye mean to mur- 
der me ’cause he told you to? ” 

I can’t,” said the tortured Englishman, with 
white lips. I can’t. At the next turn, take to the 
woods to the right. I’ll fire and run to the left. I’ll 
do no murder, factor or no factor.” 

When the path doubled to the left and the four 
men ahead had turned the corner and could no 
longer look back at the two men behind. Zed slipped 
noiselessly into the high underbrush at the west 
of the trail. A second or two afterwards, he heard 
James shout: 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 271 

“ Halt ! Halt, or Til fire ! ” 

“ Bang ! ” went the Englishman’s gun, aimed in 
the wrong direction. Then the Englishman ran to the 
east, shouting to his companions that their prisoner 
had run, calling to them to join in the hunt for him. 
The five big men were plunging like elephants east- 
ward through the forest, while Zed was running like 
a deer to the west. There was no danger now that 
they could track the trapper. He was free, but he 
was alone in a wilderness of savage beasts and 
of more savage men. His only weapon was a 
knife. 

“ There was some days, son,” said Zed, ‘‘ when I 
lived chiefly on bark. Bark’s fillin’, but ’tain’t real 
good eatin’. Then I caught a muskrat. I lived 
on him for two days, but I don’t hanker after no 
more muskrats, long’s I live. Then an Injun caught 
me.” 

The trapper had waked one morning to find an 
Indian covering him with a gun. The savage had 
taken his knife while he slept. He motioned to 
Zed to go through the forest ahead of him. The 
white man marched forward to what he supposed 


272 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

was certain death. The march ended in a lovely 
glade, where a squaw and two children peeked out 
of a wigwam. 

“ Sit here,” said the Indian, pointing to the foot 
of a far-spreading tree. Zed promptly obeyed. 
Then the captor’s wife brought food to the captive. 
Presently, at her husband’s command, she bathed, 
and bound up Zed’s bleeding feet. 

Once I told ye, Tom,” the trapper’s tale pro- 
ceeded, that the only good Injun was a dead In- 
jun. Well, I was most mortally wrong. The Pine 
Tree — -that was this Injun’s name — was as good a 
man as God ever made. We managed to talk to- 
gether a bit. As far as I could make out, a white 
man had done somethin’ fine for him and Mrs. Pine 
Tree the year before — saved ’em from somethin’ 
bad — and had told him to pay him by takin’ care o’ 
the next white Pine Tree run across. I was that 
next white. I stayed with the Pine Tree family 
most a month. Then I struck off for the Miss- 
issippi, food in my pack, knife at my belt — and Pine 
Tree offered me his gun. Think o’ that, Tom, his 
only gun. Of course I wouldn’t take it. Good 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 273 

luck to Mr. and Mrs. Pine Tree and both them little 
Pine Tree pappooses, forever, amen.” 

Tom and Hans echoed that hearty prayer. 

“ I struck the Mississippi,” continued the trap- 
per, “ and I got on a log and headed down-stream 
for St. Louis. I reckoned I could get an outfit there 
and start off ’cross country for that big river Mr. 
Astor said must be there. ’Twas a long drift to 
St. Louis. Many’s the time I wisht I had one of them 
steamboats Rumsey and a boy I know used to make. 
But when I got there, I was worse off’n when I was 
alone on the Mississippi. I told the Spanish com- 
mandant just how I come there — ’course I said 
nothin’ ’bout where I meant to go — and he thought 
I was lyin’ and was a British spy. He sent me down 
to Natchez a prisoner and I lay there in jail I dunno 
how long. It seemed like years. They chained me 
and they starved me and they kicked me. When 
the fever came, I was glad. I just longed to die. 
And then old Hans here, he come along. He saved 
me and he brought me to you, son. God bless him ! ” 
The old trapper sank back, exhausted. Exposure, 
imprisonment, starvation had worn him to skin and 


274 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

bone. He still thought he could start westward 
from New Orleans and so make good his agreement 
with John Jacob Astor. Tom and Hans knew bet- 
ter. Zed’s days in the open were over. The last 
act in the drama of his life was drawing near. It 
was to be a peaceful and a happy last act. 

“ Home is waiting for you, Zed,” Tom used to 
say; “ the old home on Broad Street. And ' Mother 
Strong ’ is waiting for you. Hans says you were 
calling for her in your fever. "Be sure she heard 
that call. You are going home with me. It’s your 
home, too.” 

At first Zed used to protest. He must do what 
Mr. Astor had told him to do. He must get into 
the open. He couldn’t live in a house. But he 
gradually came to know that his iron strength was 
not to return. He promised to go back with Tom 

for a visit.” Perhaps he might stay “ quite some 
time.” 

They spent long days on their southern journey. 
By night they tied up, but by day they rowed and 
drifted by unpeopled shores, chiefly swamps. Great 


Tom Strong;, Boy-Captain 275 

cypress trees held masses of Spanish moss swaying 
in the soft air. Armies of pelicans, gorged with 
fish, sat in long, stolid lines. Alligators swarmed on 
every sandbar. Sometimes a deer broke through a 
canebrake, or a ’possum hung sleepily from a tree, 
or a bear shouldered his black bulk through a 
thicket. But it was chiefly a waste of waters, 
monotonous, unending. There was not one sign of 
human life. They could scarcely believe their eyes 
when the first trim houses of the French settlers 
north of New Orleans began to appear. There were 
fields and there were fences. Wreaths of smoke 
rose from the chimneys. Oxen dragged plows 
through pastures that were being broken up for cane. 
Horsemen were galloping to and fro. Pretty girls 
lobked shyly from shady verandas at the oddly- 
shaped tub from Pittsburg, a sight almost never 
seen in those waters. Few Kentucky boats had ever 
gotten by the long arm Gayoso stretched out from 
Natchez to bar the free navigation of the Mississ- 
ippi. The “ Lovely Betsey ” swung around the 
northern end of the great curve where New Orleans 
still lies, below the surface of the river, walled in 


276 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

by levees that hold back the flood which always 
threatens her and always makes her thrive. It is 
that curve which gives her the name of the Crescent 
City. When Tom and his friends saw her, she had 
about five thousand people. They were chiefly 
French, and the ways of the town were of a de- 
lightful gaiety. However, the somber Spaniard 
ruled them. Above the old Government House, 
which is still one of the sights of New Orleans, the 
red-and-yellow flag of Spain stirred gently in the 
heavy air. The town was a piece of the Old World 
set down bodily in the New. To-day there is noth- 
ing in Paris as French as the old French Quarter of 
New Orleans. Tom and Zed and Hans were deeply 
impressed by what they saw. Jim looked at it all 
with the good-natured, happy-go-lucky carelessness 
of his race. He was in Tom’s care. That was 
enough for him. So he thought about nothing with 
great persistence, while Tom thought about his ap- 
proaching interview with Miro, the ruler of Louisi- 
ana, from the mouth of the Mississippi to the sources 
of the Missouri. 

As a matter of fact, the interview was not at all 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 277 

alarming. A sentinel had been posted on the 
“ Lovely Betsey,” as soon as she was moored, and 
all trading was strictly forbidden until the Gov- 
ernor’s pleasure should be known. The sentinel 
turned out to be a German who had drifted into the 
Spanish army. He and Hans fired volleys of their 
common language at each other, to the intense de- 
light of both. He asked many questions about their 
journey. Hans, who had learned caution, answered 
with apparent frankness, but said never a word 
about Charles Smith or Juan Gregorio. The em- 
bargo on trading turned out to Tom’s great profit. 
The merchants of New Orleans were eager to buy up 
this treasure-trove of tobacco, hai:dware, and flour. 
The enforced delay whetted their eagerness. When 
Tom was permitted to sell, the bidding for his 
goods was fast and furious. He made so much 
money that when he turned in his accounts at Phila- 
delphia, in May of that notable year 1787, after 
Washington had received his investment and inter- 
est and half the profits, nearly $3,000 was left for 
Tom. In those days $3,000 was a good deal. A 
gorgeously-clad aide-de-camp came to the levee to 


278 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

take Tom up to Government House, but Miro was 
simple in garb and speech, a fine example of the 
best of the Spanish Grandee. He received the boy- 
captain with stately courtesy, assured him that 
Gayoso’s clearance-papers were in proper form, and 
gave orders that the American should be free to 
sell. When he heard that General Washington was 
the real owner of the venture, his interest was 
great. 

“ He is to be the king of your country, is he 
not?” 

“ We wish no king. Your Excellency.” 

“ No people can be ruled without one or be happy 
without one,” said the loyal Spaniard. “ I know 
he is to be your king. General Wilkinson told me 
so. Will General Wilkinson be king of Kentucky ? ” 

It was hard not to laugh at the idea of a king 
ruling the free frontiersmen of Kentucky, but Tom 
kept his face straight and said there would be no 
royal robes for Wilkinson. Miro had made up his 
mind, however, and was not to be convinced. 

You are — pardon me, Senor — perhaps too young 
to know of such weighty matters. When you reach 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 279 

home (God send you safe journey) you will find 
your Washington king east of the Alleghany Moun- 
tains, and on this side General Wilkinson will either 
be king or else one of the chief servants of the 
greatest of all kings, His Most Christian Majesty 
of Spain, whom may God preserve.” 

“ Every American wishes well to your king. 
Your Excellency. We have not forgotten what 
Spain and France did for us when we were facing 
England alone.” 

“ ’Tis well said, Senor Captain. I am your debtor 
for the saying of it. Now tell me, have you any 
complaint against my lieutenant at Natchez, Senor 
Gayoso ? ” 

“ I make no complaint. Your Excellency.” 

“ Nay, but I have heard of his levying tribute 
outside of the law. Did any of your lading stay 
perchance at Natchez, at his behest?” 

Senor Gayoso was kind enough to give me my 
clearance-papers the day I arrived. Your Excellency. 
He and his secretary were busy on other matters, 
so when they attended so promptly to mine, I made 
them a trifling present.” 


280 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

“Was it so trifling? What did they take from 
you?” 

Tom, fairly cornered, repeated the list he knew by 
heart, — the list of sixteen barrels of flour, a hun- 
dred-weight of tobacco, thirteen axes, and three 
plows. 

“ You have all such things for sale here? ” 

“ Yes, Your Excellency.” 

“ Come back here when you have sold them and 
tell me what prices you get for them. Until to- 
morrow, Sehor Captain.” 

Tom was bowed out and escorted back to the 
“ Lovely Betsey ” by the gorgeous aide-de-camp, now 
most obsequious to the young man His Excellency 
the Governor had treated with such honor. Word 
was sent out that cargo and boat were for sale. 
There was instantly a crowd at the levee. Prices 
Tom had never dreamed of asking were freely of- 
fered and promptly paid. The “ Lovely Betsey ” 
sold for ten times what she cost. Lumber and nails 
were precious commodities in New Orleans. If 
the town had been American, a dozen sawmills 
would have been turning out lumber nearby, but 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 281 

under the stifling rule of Spain no sawmill could 
be started without formal permission from the Coun- 
cil of the Indies; and getting a permit cost ten 
times as much as installing a mill. An applicant 
was fortunate if his petition was answered within 
three years of the making of it. 

When Miro was told of the prices obtained, he 
figured out what Gayoso’s and Don Jose’s steal- 
ings amounted to, at New Orleans figures, and 
gave Tom an order on the treasury for that 
sum. 

“ There has been some slight delay,” he ex- 
plained, in the payment of salaries in this prov- 
ince. Doubtless His Majesty has been too busy 
with affairs of greater moment to trouble himself 
about our poor concerns. A few days ago, how- 
ever, I received orders to pay Senor Gayoso his 
salary for year before last. I have had no oppor- 
tunity as yet to remit it, and now I shall deduct from 
it what he and his secretary took from you. It is 
not to be permitted that a servant of my king should 
rob King George Washington. Make me out a 
receipt, my American friend, and I will send it to 


282 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Natchez in place of the hard dollars which you 
receive. Ah, ha, Sehor Gayoso will find that he is 
watched; that I have righted your wrongs at his 
hands.” 

As Tom now received New Orleans prices for 
the goods Gayoso had taken and as Natchez prices 
for Kentucky goods were much less, Tom had the 
satisfaction, not only of making a handsome profit 
out of having been robbed, but also of knowing that 
Gayoso had lost money on each and every item of 
his thefts. 

On one point Miro was obdurate. He had recog- 
nized Gayoso’s clearance-papers, but he let Tom 
understand that Gayoso was to issue no more. 
“ There is courtesy between kings,” he explained 
to Tom, “ but your king must not try to trade here 
again, until my king saith that he may. The New 
Orleans market is only for the subjects of Spain.” 

“ How is it, then, that General Wilkinson can 
trade here? ” Tom asked. 

It was a blunt and tactless question. Its real an- 
swer lay in the archives of Spain, in which, not long 
ago, Wilkinson’s oath of allegiance to the Spanish 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 283 

Crown was found. Miro put the question by with 
grave courtesy. 

“ There are some things, my young American 
friend, which it is better not to ask.” 

Tom, abashed, begged the Grandee’s pardon and 
received it in a kindly smile. That night he and 
Hans slept in a bed for the first time in six weeks. 
Zed for the first time in six months. Jim stretched 
on the floor at their feet like a big Newfoundland. 
A few days afterwards all four sailed in a packet 
for Havana. Spanish law forbade any ship to 
enter New Orleans unless she flew the Spanish flag 
and sailed from a Spanish port. This seems absurd 
to us, but it is no more absurd than the archaic 
navigation-laws of the United States to-day. Only 
American ships can sail between American ports. 
Before they sailed, Tom and Hans had to get new 
clothes, for Tom had the distinguished honor of be- 
ing bidden to dine with Governor-General Miro, and 
^Hans, as Tom’s friend, was invited to the levee that 
followed. Zed also was asked, but was not well 
enough to go. Tom, who had dined with Washing- 
ton, was not overwhelmed by the event, but honest 


284 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Hans rejoiced in the memory of it to the last day 
of his life. He had a fine military bearing from his 
service in the German, English, and American 
armies. He was magnificently built. His great 
height and his blond coloring made him conspicuous 
in the throng of short, dark officials born under 
Spanish skies. The Hessian peasant and Pennsyl- 
vania farmer had a simple dignity that made him 
no unworthy guest of the Spanish Grandee. Hans 
Rolf was far more conspicuous at the levee than 
Tom Strong, to Tom’s great delight. 

At Havana, they took ship for New York. 

Hans made Broad Street ring with his joy over 
seeing “ Mutter Strong ” again, but left soon for 
York, where his own mother, wife, and children 
were as happy over his homecoming as he was. 
With the wages he had earned and with a handsome 
bonus Tom gave him, he had almost enough to make 
his final payment for the improvements on his farrn. 
In fact, he lacked but $200 and that he borrowed 
from a New York money-lender, one Ebenezer 
Shark. Tom indorsed Hans’s note to Shark’s order 
for the $200. In otfier words, he made himself 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 285 

liable to pay Hans’s debt. But he knew Hans was 
sure to pay it himself, when the note came due. In 
fact Hans did so. He wrote Tom he had paid 
it. Tom then dismissed the matter from his 
mind. 

Zed, of course, was taken straight into “ Mother 
Strong’s ” home. He was already in her heart. 
How she rejoiced in taking care of him ! Infinite 
content and infinite peace came to the old trapper. 
He sat quite still, day after day. His eyes followed 
Mrs. Strong, as she went gracefully to and fro on 
her household tasks. He used to say, over and over 
again : 

At last I have a home.” 

Tom hired Jim as a house-servant, work for 
which Jim had been splendidly trained on the old 
Virginia plantation where he had been born. He 
loved the old massa ” who had trained him and 
who had freed him by his last will and testament, 
as many Virginians did in those days. Mrs. Strong 
protested that she had never had a servant and 
wouldn’t know what to do with one, but she was not 
as young as she had been, and Tom had his way and 


286 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

left her in charge of old Jim when he himself left 
home again for Philadelphia. 

Washington was in Philadelphia. So were nearly 
threescore other leading Americans. Great things 
were happening in Philadelphia. The real United 
States of America, the real nation we love so well, 
was about to be born there. 


CHAPTER XI 


is the way Washington led up to the mak- 
ing of a real nation, in 1787. He followed the 
advice Franklin had sent him by Tom, advice which 
Franklin also set forth at length in the letter Tom 
took from Philadelphia to Mount Vernon. 

Washington, always interested in transportation 
questions, had taken an active part in urging Mary- 
land and Virginia to build the Chesapeake and Ohio 
Canal, which was to connect Chesapeake Bay and 
the Eastern seaboard with the Ohio River and the 
Western plains. As part of this plan, Virginia 
chartered a company to extend the navigation of the 
James and Potomac, — the Powtomack, as many Vir- 
ginians spelled it then. The Legislature chose 
Washington as president of the company and voted 
him 150 shares of its stock. He took the presidency, 
but declined the stock, believing he could arouse 
public interest in the project more readily if it were 

known that his work for it was unselfish. Now, in 
287 


288 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

order to improve the upper Potomac, Virginia and 
Maryland, owning its two banks, had to co-operate. 
So Washington asked commissioners from both 
States to meet at Mount Vernon. They did so. 
Next Pennsylvania was asked to send representa- 
tives, because the western end of the proposed canal 
might be within her borders. When delegates from 
the three States were gathered at Mount Vernon, 
their host suggested that they should agree upon a 
common currency and upon common import taxes. 
Every State had its own currency, usually a debased 
and fluctuating one, and its own tariff. This seemed 
a sensible idea. So did their host’s second sug- 
gestion that Delaware, which lay upon Chesapeake 
Bay and had many joint interests with Maryland 
and Pennsylvania, should also be asked to join the 
league. But now that four States had thus come 
together, why should not all thirteen? The Vir- 
ginia Legislature, deftly handled by James Madison, 
afterwards the fourth President of the United 
States, issued a call to all the States to send com- 
missioners to Annapolis, on the first Monday of 
September, 1786, to consider ‘‘ commercial regula- 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 289 

tions.” This was in exact accordance with Frank- 
lin’s advice. Only five of the thirteen States sent 
delegates, but fortunately New York was one of 
the five, and fortunately Colonel Alexander Hamil- 
ton was one of New York’s delegates. An address, 
written by Hamilton, was adopted by the five States 
and sent to the thirteen. It urged that they should 
all meet at Philadelphia on the second Monday of 
May, 1787, to consider commercial regulations 
‘‘ and other important matters.” The four words I 
have quoted were the seed that ripened into the 
Constitution of the United States, which the great 
English statesman, William E. Gladstone, who did 
not love us any too well, called “ the most won- 
derful work ever struck off at a given time by the 
brain and purpose of man.” In October, 1786, Con- 
gress, then in session in New York, was asked to 
indorse the calling of the Convention. Rufus King, 
not yet a full convert to Washington’s views, carried 
a resolution through Congress against the proposed 
conference. Things looked dark. Just then, how- 
ever, Virginia named a delegation of first-class men 
and put Washington at the head of it. The magic of 


290 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

that mighty name stirred the country he had saved. 
New Jersey named delegates. Pennsylvania did 
likewise. Rufus King came over to the right side 
and moved that Congress itself call the Convention. 
Congress did so. All the States except Rhode 
Island sent delegates. The chance to make a nation 
had come. 

From May 14th . to May 25th, the delegates 
straggled into the pleasant Quaker city. On the 
25th, a quorum gathered in Independence Hall, 
where the Declaration of Independence had been 
made, July 4, 1776. By unanimous vote, George 
Washington of Virginia was chosen to preside. 
Then Pennsylvania added Benjamin Franklin to 
the delegation she had already chosen, so that there 
might be another man, satisfactory to all the war- 
ring factions of the warring States, to preside in 
case of the absence of Washington. The Conven- 
tion held all its sessions in secret. The first thing 
an eager country heard was in September of 1787, 
when the Convention, or the great majority of its 
members, signed the Constitution which has been 
the Magna Charta of American liberties from that 



Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 291 

day to this. It was published to the world and the 
Convention adjourned, its good work done. 


INDEPENDENCE HALL IN 1776 

Much good work remained to be done by the 
friends of the Constitution. It was not to go into 


292 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

effect until nine of the thirteen States ratified it. 
In every State there was fierce opposition. The 
rancor of its enemies reached the point of calling 
Washington a born fool and Franklin a fool from 
age. Early in the Convention Washington had op- 
posed the idea that the Constitution should be a 
colorless document, running counter to nobody’s 
prejudices. He had said : Let us erect a standard, 
to which the wise and the honest can repair; the 
event is in the hand of God.” Those splendid words 
are carved on the southern front of the Washing- 
ton Arch, which stands in stately beauty at the foot 
of Fifth Avenue, in Washington Square, New York. 
The Square was once a potter’s field, later a fashion- 
able center, now an Italian playground, though some 
of the most beautiful old houses in the city still 
form its northern boundary. When the Constitu- 
tion had been signed, Benjamin Franklin, then 
eighty-one years old, who, with Washington, had 
signed the Declaration of Independence in that same 
room eleven years before, pointed to a half-sun 
chiseled on the back of Washington’s chair, and said : 
“ As I have been sitting here all these weeks, I have 



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Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 293 

often wondered whether yonder sun was setting or 
rising. But now I know that it is a rising sun.” 

While the Convention sat, John Fitch launched 
his first steamboat upon the Delaware. 

Tom had rendered his accounts to Washington as 
soon as he reached Philadelphia. The General went 
over them carefully, as his custom was, checking 
off the additions and subtractions. He found them 
all correct. ^Then he congratulated Tom on his suc- 
cessful business venture. Then they divided the 
substantial profits, to their joint satisfaction. Wash- 
ington shook his head over what Tom had to say 
about General Wilkinson, but he was too busy with 
the Convention to bother about Kentucky just then. 
Spmewhat later, Wilkinson did a good thing for his 
country, incidentally a very profitable thing for 
himself. In January, 1789, he got together a 
flotilla of twenty-five flatboats, with 150 armed men, 
and a few small cannon. The boats carried away 
so much wheat and pork and corn that provision- 
prices in Kentucky rose sixty per cent. Under 
the American flag, the flotilla went by Natchez, 
where Gayoso watched hungrily, but was afraid to 


294 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

try to levy tribute. It anchored without opposition 
at New Orleans. Wilkinson made a small fortune 
out of the venture. The free navigation of the 
Mississippi became a fact. It was soon recognized 
by Spain. It continued until Thomas Jefferson, 
third President of the United States, cracked the 
Constitution and bought the vast tract called Louisi- 
ana, now in whole or part the States of Louisi- 
ana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Ne- 
braska, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Montana, and the 
two Dakotas. He bought it for $15,000,000 from 
Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, who 
had torn it from the feeble hands of Spain. The 
purchase more than doubled the area of our coun- 
try. ' It was 825,000 square miles before and now 
became about 2,000,000 square miles. There is one 
block of ground in New York City to-day that is 
worth more than Jefferson paid for this empire. 

Mrs. John Claypoole was Tom’s landlady at 
Philadelphia. Her house was at 239 Arch Street. 
It was a small two-story-and-attic brick dwelling. 
One marble step led up to the front door. There 
was one window on the first floor, two on the second. 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 295 

and a dormer-window in the roof. Mrs. Claypoole 
was rather a celebrated character. She was born 
January i, 1752, of sturdy Quaker parents. Her 
maiden name was Elizabeth Griscom. Her father 
was a builder and had worked on the erection of 
Independence Hall. In December, 1773, Betsey 
Griscom ran away with an upholsterer’s apprentice, 
one John Ross, and married him. He was an Epis- 
copalian, the son of the Rev. ^neas Ross. His wife 
was promptly turned out of the Quaker fold, because 
she had gone outside of it for a husband. In 1775, 
John Ross was injured upon a wharf in Philadel- 
phia, while guarding some military stores. He died 
of this injury at his home, 239 Arch Street, in Janu- 
ary, 1776. His widow carried on his upholstery 
business at this house. In May, 1776, Mrs. Betsey 
Ross, a young and beautiful widow, famous for her 
skill with the needle, had the honor of receiving a 
visit from three members of the Continental Con- 
gress, General George Washington of Virginia, 
Colonel George Ross, and Mr. Robert Morris of 
Pennsylvania. The first two had signed the Decla- 
ration of Independence. The third was the financial 


296 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

genius of the Revolution. The distinguished trio 
were a Committee of Congress, charged with the 
duty of having a flag made for the new nation. 
Colonel Ross suggested their asking his niece by 
marriage to make the flag. So they called upon her. 
Would Mistress Betsey Ross make it? She would 
and she did. That same month, May 28th, 1776, 
Washington sent orders to General Putnam in New 
York that “ the several colonels . . . hurry to get 
their colors done.” As Congress had no money. 
Colonel Ross paid his niece for her work. In May, 
1777, a year later. Congress voted her £14. 12s. 2d. 
for flags she had made for the fleet in the Delaware 
Riyer. She was then the wife of Captain Joseph 
Ashburn, whom she had married in January of that 
year, at the end of the first twelvemonth of her 
widowhood. Captain Ashburn was captured by the 
British and died in prison in England in 1782. John 
Claypoole, a fellow-prisoner, nursed Ashburn until 
he died; brought his diary and his last messages to 
his wife; and married her, in 1783, as soon as she 
had mourned for the year she seems to have allowed 
herself between husbands. Claypoole lived until 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 297 

1817, but as he was a lifelong invalid from a wound 
gotten at the battle of Germantown and finally died 
of it, Betsey Ross may be said to have laid three 
husbands upon the altar of her country, — upon 
which Artemus Ward was willing to sacrifice all 
his wife’s relations. The Philadelphia Friends had 
thrust out of their communion all its members who 
had fought for liberty, so in 1793 a “ Free Quaker ” 
church was organized by these red-blooded Friends. 
The Free Quakers ” were sometimes called the 
“ Fighting Quakers.” Mrs. Claypoole was one of 
them. In their meeting-house, after her death in 
1836, her pew was marked with a brass-plate with 
the legend : “ In this pew worshiped Betsey Ross, 
who made the first flag.” The flags she made were 
not quite of the present pattern, but they were in use 
for over a year before Congress legislated on the 
subject. The present flag, of course with only thir- 
teen stars, was adopted by Congress in June, 1777. 
It first floated at Fort Stanwix, near Oriskany, New 
York, in September of that year. 

With the money he had made at New Orleans, 
Tom bought for his mother the house next her own 


298 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

on Broad Street and a small farm farther north on 
Manhattan Island. He bought for himself a little 
shipyard, which he put in charge of Betsey Carhart’s 
father. Incidentally, this brought Miss Betsey to 
New York to live. Tom was living chiefly at Mount 
Vernon, whence Washington directed the fight for 
the ratification of the Constitution. Soon he came 
hurrying back to New York. He brought a mes- 
sage for Alexander Hamilton. 

“ Tell Colonel Hamilton,” Washington said to 
Tom, “ that to win this fight we must have a series 
of papers, one every week or so, which will appeal to 
the public mind and conscience and will induce the 
people to vote for the Constitution. I have sounded 
Mr. Madison, who says he will aid in such a work, 
but cannot lead in it. He thinks Colonel Hamilton 
is the man to do it. Probably Mr. Jay will help. 
Tell the Colonel, however, that his old chief calls 
again on his staff-officer and knows he will not call 
in vain.” 

Tom rode posthaste to New York. After an 
evening at the Carharts’ and a night at home, he 
walked up Broad Street to Wall and turned a few 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 299 

steps eastward, where Hamilton had his law-office. 
A disappointment awaited him. The Colonel was 
not there; would not be there for an indefinite 
period; had taken a sloop for Albany early that 
very morning. 

There was nothing to do but chase after the 
statesman. It was to be a stern-chase, but it might 
not be a long one, for sloops were slow; the shift- 
ing winds of the Hudson often put many tacks to 
and fro into one mile northward; and Billy-boy was 
fresh and untired in his stable. Another horse had 
brought Tom on from Mount Vernon. With a gay 
good-by to his mother, he was off. Billy-boy set- 
tled down into a long, swinging stride as soon as he 
reached “ the Common,” now City Hall Park, then 
the northern limit of the little town. He kept his 
pace to the end of the island and galloped over “ the 
King’s bridge,” which crossed Spuyten Duyvil 
Creek just where Kingsbridge crosses it to-day. It 
cost a pedestrian threepence to use the bridge. 
June I2th, 1693, William and Mary of England 
had granted a royal charter to Frederick Philipse 
for “ a Lordship or Manor of Philipsborough in 


300 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

free and common soccage, according to the tenure 
of our Manor of East Greenwich within our County 
of Kent in our realm of England, yielding, render- 
ing, and paying therefor, yearly and every year, on 
the feast-day of the Annunciation of the Blessed 
Virgin Mary, at our fort in New York, unto us, our 
heirs and successors, the annual rent of £4. 12s. cur- 
rent money of our said Province.” The charter 
further provided that the Lord of the Manor could 
build a bridge across Spuyten Duyvil Creek; that 
it should be called the King’s bridge ; and that three- 
pence or more should be the toll thereof, to be col- 
lected by Lord Erederick, his heirs and assigns for- 
ever. A sixpence carried both Tom and Billy-boy 
across the old bridge. He galloped northward along 
the Hudson. Erom a hilltop near Yonkers, he 
caught sight of a sloop floating idly on the river, 
that reflected it in its calm waters. There was not 
a breath of air. It was as beautiful as Words- 
worth’s vision in Yarrow Revisited ” : 

“Let . . . 

The swan on still St. Mary’s Lake 

Float double, swan and shadow.” 

The tide was just on the ebb, so ocean and river 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 301 

were co-operating to take the sloop back to town. 
Tom rode to the shore, hired a boat, arranged to 
have Billy-boy cared, for, and betook himself to the 
“ Saucy Polly,” a smart packet-boat that held but 
one passenger. It was Alexander Hamilton on his 
way to Albany to consult with his father-in-law. 
General Schuyler, how best to carry New York for 
the new Constitution. Hamilton welcomed our hero 
gladly. He listened with profound interest to the 
.message from Washington. Then he took from his 
luggage an inkhorn, some quill-pens, paper, and a 
sand-box. The use of a sand-box instead of blot- 
ting paper still survives in the United States 
Senate. 

“ I know what the General wants,” said Hamil- 
ton. “ With Madison’s help and Jay’s, I can make 
things clear to the people. What shall we call the 
papers? I have it. They shall be called ‘ The Fed- 
eralist.’ We have baptized the baby. Captain 
Strong, before it is born. Now let me see if I 
cannot fashion it in comely shape.” 

He mused for a moment, took up a quill, and 
scratched it swiftly across the paper. 


302 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

How will this do for a beginning? ’’ he asked. 
Then he read aloud : 

“ To the people of the State of New York : 

“ After an unequivocal experience of the ineffi- 
ciency of the subsisting Federal Government, you 
are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution 
for the United States of America. The subject 
speaks its own importance.” 

Thus was begun in the cabin of a sloop becalmed 
on the Hudson one of the greatest of all books on 
politics. “ The Federalist ” has been almost forgot- 
ten in the clash and clangor and clamor of these 
strenuous days, but it will be studied by thoughtful 
men for many a decade to come. It is one of the 
greatest books on government ever written. It was 
published in the Independent Journal of New York, 
sometimes once a week, sometimes three or four 
times a week. Of its eighty- five chapters, Alexander 
Hamilton wrote fifty-one, James Madison twenty- 
nine, and John Jay five. In the quaint fashion of 
the day, each number was signed “ Publius.” 

Tom rose to go. Hamilton shook hands with him. 


saying : 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 303 

Let the General be sure of all the help I can 
give.” 

Before Billy-boy’s hoofs rang again on the cobble- 
stones of Broad Street, the first number of The 
Federalist ” was finished. In a few days it was pub- 
lished. Then in a few hours it was on everybody’s 
lips. Many exulted in it. Many denounced it. 
Some of them tried to answer it, but none suc- 
ceeded in doing so. So far as a complex result can 
be traced back to one cause, we may say that “ The 
Federalist ” secured the ratification of the Consti- 
tution that made us a nation. The Constitution has 
been somewhat amended. It needs some amend- 
ments now. No paper drawn in 1787 for the gov- 
ernment of 3,500,000 people could meet all the needs 
of 1912 in the government of 100,000,000 people. 
But what Gladstone said of it is true. It is a “ most 
wonderful work.” It is the charter of our liber- 
ties. 

A few days afterwards, Tom was sauntering 
down Nassau Street on a bright morning, on his 
way to his shipyard. He was thinking of going 
into partnership with his tenant, old Mr. Carhart. 


304 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 
In front of the law-office of Colonel Aaron Burr, 
a mean and greasy man tapped him on the shoulder. 
He turned, rather angry at the familiarity. The 
mean and greasy man was a tipstaff. 

I have a warrant for your honor,” he said. 
“ No doubt you will come with me peacefully. 
There’s no need people should know you’re ar- 
rested.” 

“ Arrested ? ” said Tom. “ For what? ” 

At the suit of Ebenezer Shark versus Hans 
Rolf, with Thomas Strong impleaded as surety for 
said Rolf. Judgment has been entered for $200 and 
costs, execution issued and unpaid. Here is the 
warrant for the taking of your honor’s body.” 

The debt was long since paid and I never heard 
of the suit.” 

‘‘ Sure, your honor can get a lawyer to say all 
that to the court, but first you must go to the 
debtors’ prison.” 

A gentle, persuasive voice fell on Tom’s 
ear. 

“What is the matter. Captain Strong? Is this 
fellow pestering you? I have not the pleasure of 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 305 

your acquaintance, but I know who you are. And I 
am Aaron Burr, at your service.” 

Jonathan Edwards was one of the greatest theolo- 
gians this country has ever produced. His life was 
blameless. He was a lovable man. But his stern 
creed made him believe that hell was full of infants 
“ not a span long.” His grandson, Aaron Burr, was 
a man of utter charm, utterly without character. 
The grandfather believed too much. The grandson 
believed too little. His early career was brilliant. 
His fall was that of Lucifer. He dreamed of being 
an emperor. He became a vice-president of the 
United States. He murdered Alexander Hamilton 
in a duel. He was tried for treason. He died, 
burdened with debt and with the curses of his fel- 
low-countrymen. At this time, he was one of the 
leading lawyers and leading Antifederalists of 
New York. He turned to the tipstaff. 

Let me see your warrant.” 

He examined it and said to Tom: 

“ The papers seem regular. Yet I heard you say 
the debt was paid and you had had no notice of 
the suit.”. 


3o 6 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

“ That is true, Colonel Burr. I have property to 
pay the claim, but it is already paid. ’Twas an in- 
dorsement for a friend. He paid it.'’ 

How know you that ? ” 

He wrote me so.” 

“ And you believe him ? ” 

“ I would answer for his truthfulness with my 
life." 

This smacks of villainy," said Burr. Methinks 
I have heard of some sharp practices by this Eben- 
ezer Shark. Well, Captain, you must go to the 
debtors' prison. The law will have it so. But I 
will have you out of it within an hour. You may 
be sure of that." 

Tom walked by the tipstaff's side in a sore humor. 
It seemed to him that every man they met was say- 
ing to himself : So young Strong has been caught 
at last; what is his crime? " At the prison he was 
thrust into a filthy cell. His request for a messenger 
was refused. The turnkeys jeered at him. A few 
years ago, before this building had been torn down, 
it was thus described : The jail on the Commons, 
built about 1760, was the finest public edifice of its 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 307 

day. It was a torture-chamber for patriot prisoners 
during the Revolution. Thereafter, as a debtors’ 
prison, it became the most popular public edifice of 
its day; for from January second to December third 
of 1788, eleven hundred and sixty-two persons, one 
out of every twenty-five citizens, were jailed there 
for debt. Even in our day, when it is used as the 
Hall of Records, is neglected and dingy, and is said 
to have recorded within it all the smells of the 
Island from the Dutch days down, it is still beauti- 
ful. It has a right to be; for it is a reproduction 
in miniature of the great fane of Diana of Ephesus.” 

Burr was better than his word. Before the hour 
had run, he brought an order for Tom’s release. 
Our hero was again a free man. 

“ How can I thank you. Colonel Burr? And how 
did you do it ? ” 

“ Faith, I had a few hundred dollars to spare and 
I paid the debt. You will repay me when ’tis con- 
venient, if I do not get the money back from Shark. 
If he has played villain and locked you up on a debt 
that was paid, the rogue shall sweat for it.” 

“ I can borrow the money this morning. Colonel, 


3o 8 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

and will do so. And what are your fees for the 

great service you have done me? ” 

“ My fee ? ” said Burr, looking rather sadly at the 
honest face, beaming with gratitude, that was lifted 
to his own. “ My fee? It is that Captain Strong 
shall henceforth think and speak a little more kindly 
of Colonel Burr than he has hitherto done.” 

Tom blushed scarlet. An ardent friend of Hamil- 
ton, he had not always measured his words in speak- 
ing of Hamilton’s deadly enemy, Aaron Burr. 

‘‘ You have taught me to be a Christian, Colonel 
Burr, and ” 

‘‘ That is more in my grandfather’s line than in 
mine, I fear.” 

“ Will you accept my apologies and my sincerest 
thanks ? ” 

Say no more. Captain. The account is closed.” 

With a hearty handshake the two parted. When 
Tom came back to Burr’s office with the money, he 
found that that account, too, was closed. Burr had 
sent for Ebenezer Shark and terrified him into a 
confession. Hans had paid the money. Shark, rely- 
ing upon Hans’s absence, had sued Tom as his 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 309 

surety; had hired a rogue to impersonate Tom; 
had taken judgment; and had expected to collect his 
debt twice. With a trembling hand he paid Burr 
the money the latter had paid into court. With a 
still more trembling hand, he signed his confession. 
Burr read it aloud to Tom, while Shark cowered in 
the corner. 

Will you have him jailed. Captain? Say but 
the word and he is sure of prison life for at least 
five years.’’ 

“ Five minutes of it made me deadly ill. I would 
not have another man suffer as I did. Let the 
scoundrel go.” 

Shark fled at the word. With more words of 
gratitude, Tom left the lawyer’s office. Years after- 
wards, his gratitude showed itself in something more 
than words, when sorrow after sorrow seemed 
Aaron Burr’s only lot in life. 

The Constitution had been ratified. The ninth 
State, which cast the decisive vote in its favor, was 
New Hampshire, on June 21st, 1788. The New 
Hampshire Convention had met on June 17th, the 


310 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

anniversary of Bunker Hill. Virginia and New 
York and North Carolina followed. Little Rhode 
Island, fearful to the end of being oppressed by 
the big States, did not complete the roll until May 
29th, 1790, when George Washington had been for 
more than a year the President of the United States. 


CHAPTER XII 


^PRIL 6th, 1788, Congress formally counted the 
first electoral votes ever cast in this country. 
The presiding officer announced that George Wash- 
ington, Esquire, of Virginia, had received all sixty- 
nine of them and was duly elected the first President 
of the United States of America. There was huz- 
zaing outside and a salvo of cannon. Before the 
echoes had died away, Tom Strong, on Billy-boy, 
his horse, was off for Mount Vernon, eager to be 
the first to give his great commander the great 
news. He was the first, but only by an hour. Other 
men had spurred their good steeds there, too, but 
Billy-boy was the winner of the race. 

April 14th, 1788, Tom saw at Mount Vernon 
the formal announcement to Washington that his 
country had called him again into her service. Lady 
Washington stood at the General’s right, a little 
behind him. Her grandchildren clustered about her. 
Her daughter had died, young and unmarried. Her 


311 


312 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

son had died in 1781, from a cold caught in the 
trenches at Yorktown. His children were with her. 
A little group of notable Virginians had come to 
do honor to the greatest of them all. It was headed 
by George Mason, of Gunston Hall, whom Wash- 
ington called “ dear George.” The secretary of 
Congress read aloud a formal letter from the presi- 
dent of that body, notifying Washington that he was 
the unanimous choice of his countrymen for what is, 
in some respects, the greatest office in the world. 
The General spoke a few words of acceptance. 
Wine and cake were served. The simple ceremony 
was over. 

It will please me. Captain Strong, if you 
will do me the honor to accompany me to New 
York.” 

So Washington had said. Tom gladly agreed to 
do so. 

The departure was delayed two days, partly be- 
cause the new President had to borrow a goodly 
sum of money in order to meet the expenses of 
“ the presidential court,” which he was expected to 
maintain upon a ceremonious and costly scale. A 





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Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 313 

neighbor, Captain Richard Conway, lent him ten 
thousand pounds sterling, — fifty thousand dollars. 
Mrs. Washington, clinging to his coat-button, as 
was her custom, warned “ the General,” as she al- 
ways called him, against extravagance. Mean- 
while, she was preparing in her mind a list of per- 
sonal purchases, which were to make her costumes 
notable for both style and cost in the coming court, 
where New York women were to vie in magnificence 
with Virginian dames. April i6th, 1788, Wash- 
ington wrote in his diary : About ten o’clock I 
bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and 
to domestic felicity, and with a mind oppressed 
with . . . anxious and fearful sensations ... set 
out for New York.” 

The journey northward was one long festival. 
Every town clamored to entertain the new Presi- 
dent. Reception-committees crowded the road. 
Triumphal arches, decked with the tender green 
of spring, bestrode the highway. At Trenton, the 
music of “ Hail, Columbia ! ” then called “ The 
President’s March,” was heard for the first time. 
At Trenton, too, a bevy of pretty girls strewed 


314 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

with roses the bridge that crossed the Assunpink 
Creek, — a creek that had been the scene of one of 
Washington’s deftest stratagems. One result of 
that stratagem had been that the British captured 
Tom Strong, Washington’s scout. Now Captain 
Thomas Strong, acting aide-de-camp of President 
George Washington, felt Billy-boy’s hoofs fall gen- 
tly on the petals of soft rosebuds. From Elizabeth- 
town Point, the party was taken to the Battery in 
‘‘ the President’s barge, rowed by thirteen eminent 
pilots, in a handsome white dress.” They landed 
at Peck’s Slip on April 23d. Shouting thousands 
greeted them. The cry was : 

“ Long live President Washington and God bless 
Lady Washington! ” 

They went directly to a house that had been hired 
for them. It stood at the corner of Pearl and 
Cherry Streets. One of the great stone arches of 
the Brooklyn Bridge now springs from its site. 
Pearl was still called Queen Street in 1789. Dr. 
Manasseh Cutler has left on record that Queen Street 
was a whole mile long; that it was the heart of 
fashionable New York; that the houses upon it were 


Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 315 

four and even six stories high; and that it was 
wide enough for three persons to walk abreast. It 
had no sidewalks. The house was a square dwell- 
ing, three stories high, with five windows on each 



THE WALTER FRANKLIN HOUSE, WASHINGTON’S 
RESIDENCE IN NEW YORK 


street. The ceilings were rather low, — so low, in 
fact, that at one of Lady Washington’s receptions 
the tall and stately Miss McEvers found the ostrich- 
feathers in her high-piled hair ablaze from the 
chandelier. Those receptions ended, as the Mount 
Vernon evenings had ended, at precisely nine o’clock. 


3i 6 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

Tom left President Washington and Lady Wash- 
ington at the threshold of their new home, when its 
door was opened by Jeremy, the stately majordomo 
from Mount Vernon, a most distinguished old 
darky, with manners even more impressive than 
those of the master he worshiped. Then back to 
Broad Street, to his mother’s arms. That evening, 
he went of course to see the tenant of his shipyard — 
and Betsey Carhart, the tenant’s daughter. 

In one more ceremonial, Tom was to figure by 
Washington’s side. April 30th, 1787, Wall and 
Broad Streets were packed. All New York had 
gathered there; the men, gentry and tradefolk and 
artisans alike, in the street; the women in their 
gayest attire crowding every window of the neigh- 
boring residences. The Stars-and-Stripes flew 
everywhere. Three flags were draped about the 
porch of the fat little house on Broad Street, where 
Mrs. Strong, the proudest mother in all the world, 
and Zed, the proudest friend in all the world, sat 
with Mr. Carhart and his daughter. Mrs. Strong 
was crying softly with joy. The country she had 
loved enough to give it her son was now a strong 



4 


Washington Taking the Oath 












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■■4 

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■' ■< 


3 



Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 317 

nation. Her son, who had helped to make it so, had 
come back to her in safety and honor. There was 
sure to be future prosperity for Washington’s and 
Hamilton’s young friend. Her brimming eyes sought 
the recessed porch on the second story of “ Federal 

Hall,” which stood, facing down Broad Street, 

« 

where the United States Sub-treasury stands now. 
It was designed by Major L’ Enfant, the architect of 
the most beautiful building in America, the City 
Hall of New York, and the man who drew the 
ground-plan of the City of Washington. 

In the central one of the three arches in the recessed 
porch, a tall man stepped to the front and looked 
down upon the cheering multitude. He was dressed 
in a dark-brown cloth suit, of American make. He 
wore long white silk stockings. There were silver 
buckles on his low shoes. A dress-sword with a steel 
hilt hung at his side. A crimson-covered Bible lay 
on a table before him. The table cover was of crim- 
son velvet. Robert R. Livingston, Chancellor of the 
State of New York, faced him. Every sound was 
hushed. The oath of office was administered. 
George Washington, with head bared and right hand 


3i 8 Tom Strong, Boy-Captain 

resting upon the Bible, took the oath. That done, 
he had become the first President of the United 
States. 

Then cannon thundered and cheers again arose. 
Flags were waved wildly from every house. Mrs. 
Strong and Zed and Betsey Carhart waved their 
three flags vigorously, but they waved them, not at 
George Washington, the hero they venerated, but 
a+ Tom Strong, the boy they loved. 






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296 pp., i2mo. $1.50. 

“Cockle-a-doodle Hill” is where the Dudley Graham family 
went to live when they left New York, and here Ernie started 
her chicken-farm, with one solitary fowl, “Hennerietta.” The 
pictures of country scenes and the adventures and experiences 
of this household of young people are very life-like. 

“No better book for young people than ‘The Luck of the Dudley 
Grahams’ was offered last year. ‘Cock-a-Doodle Hill’ is another of 
similar qualities.” — Philadelphia Press. 


HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS (vni'I2) NEW YORK 


BOOKS FOR GIRLS 

By BEULAH MARIE DIX 


BETTY-BIDE-AT-HOME 

Illustrated by Faith Avery. i2mo. $1.25 net. 

A story of family life. Betty is just ready for college, her 
brother is studying medicine, her sister is almost able to make 
her own way in the world, when a sudden catastrophe compels 
Betty to choose between her own ambitions and her mother’s 
happiness. Betty stays at home and learns many things, among 
them the fact that duty and success can be combined. The 
account of her literary ventures will help girls who want to 
write. 

Betty is a spirited, energetic, lovable girl. The style and 
atmosphere of the story are both better than is usually the 
case in girls’ stories. 

FRIENDS IN THE END 

Illustrated by Faith Avery. i2mo. $1.25 net. 

An out-of-door story for girls which tells how Doro- 
thea Harden went, under protest, from the city to spend the 
summer at a farm in the New Hampshire mountains; how she 
met Jo Gifford from South Tuxboro, who had red hair, and 
knew she shouldn’t like her, but did; how Dorothea and Jo, at 
the farm, fell out with the young folks close by at Camp Com- 
fort; how they carried on the war, with varying success, and 
how they were sorry that they did so, and how they were glad 
in the end to make peace. 

“Will attract boys and girls equally and be good for both.” — Outlook. 

“More than the usual plot and literary completeness .” — Christian 
Register. 


HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 


PUBLISHERS 


viii’12 


NEW YORK 


By CARROLL WATSON RANKIN 


STORIES FOR GIRLS 

THE CASTAWAYS OF PETE’S PATCH 

Illustrated by Ada C. Williamson. $1.25 net. (Just pub- 
lished.) 

A tale of five girls and two youthful grown-ups who enjoyed 
unpremeditated camping; of a picturesque Indian who sells 
his home in order to live in it; of a mysteriously shipwrecked 
boy who is unable to tell whence he came; of Mabel, who 
tumbled into all the water there was, and of Mabel’s friends, 
who sometimes tumbled in with her; of broken game laws, of 
a baffled game-warden who proved to be somebody else; and 
of many other things that inight have happened on the rugged 
shores of Lake Superior, 

DANDELION COTTAGE 

Illustrated by Mmes. Shinn and Finley. $1.50. 

Four young girls secure the use of a tumbledown cottage. 
They set up housekeeping under numerous disadvantages, 
and have many amusements and queer experiences. 

“A capital story. It is refreshing to come upon an author who can 
tell us about real little girls, with sensible ordinary parents, girls who 
are neither phenomenal nor ."—Outlook. 

THE ADOPTING OF ROSA MARIE 

A sequel to “ Dandelion Cottage.” Illustrated by Mrs, Shinn. 
$1.50. 

The little girls, who played at keeping house in the earlier 
book, enlarge their activities to the extent of playing mother 
to a little Indian girl. 

“Those who have read ‘ Dandelion Cottage’ will need no urging to 
follow further. ... A lovable group of four real children, happily not 
perfect, but full of girlish plans and pranks. ... A delightful sense 
of hvLUvox ." —Bostoft Transcript. 

THE GIRLS OF GARDENVILLE 

Illustrated by Mary Wellman, i2mo. $1.50. 

Interesting, amusing, and natural stories of a girls’ club— 
“ The Sweet Sixteen” of Gardenville. 

“Will captivate as many adults as if it were written for them. . . . 
The secret of Mrs. Rankin’s charm is her naturalness . . . real girls 
. . . not young ladies with ‘ pigtails,’ but girls of sixteen who are not 
twenty-five . . , as original as amusing.’’— 


HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

34 West 330 Street NEW YORK 


THE CHILDREN OF THE NEW FOREST 


By Captain Marryat. Illustrated in color and 
line by E. Boyd Smith. Special library binding. 
$1.35 net. 

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS 

By James Fenimore Cooper. Illustrated in color 
and line by E. Boyd Smith. Special library bind- 
$1-35 net. 

In every detail of illustration and manufacture these edi- 
tions are made as if these books were being published for the 
first time for young folks. This attempt to put the juvenile 
classics in a form which on its looks will attract children, 
is meeting with widespread support from the public and 
librarians. 

The text is not abridged. 

Mr. Smith’s pictures need no commendation, but he seems 
to have treated 'these stories with unusual skill and sym- 
pathy. 


HALF A HUNDRED HERO TALES 

Of Ulysses and the Men of Old. By various authors, 
including Nathaniel Hawthorne. Illustrated. 
Special library binding. $i 35 net. 

The Greek and Roman mythological heroes whose stories 
are here collected are not covered in any other one volume. 
The arrangement gives the interest of connected narrative to 
the account of the fall of Troy, the ^neas stories, and the 
Adventures of Ulysses. 


HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 












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